observations on cfr.org website traffic surge due to chechnya terrorism scare and the boston...
Post on 12-May-2015
293 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Observations on CFR.org Website Traffic Surge Due to Chechnya Terrorism Scare
and the Boston Marathon Bombings.
May 8, 2014
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.
http://www.cfr.org
http://www.foreignaffairs.com
Timeline of EventsSunday Monday Tuesda
yWednesday
Thursday
Friday Saturday
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Monday April 15, 2013Day of Attack on Boston
Marathon Finish Line
Friday April 19, 2013Day of Boston Lockdown and
Manhunt
CHECHNYA TERRORISM
AGAINST USA???
AP
RIL
2013
What is Chechnya?
CFR.org became the authority for reliable information that there was no serious threat of Chechnya launching full terrorist attack on USA.
http://www.cfr.org/separatist-terrorism/chechen-separatist-movement/p11121
Visits to CFR.org surged on April 19.
1-Apr-1
3
3-Apr-1
3
5-Apr-1
3
7-Apr-1
3
9-Apr-1
3
11-Apr-1
3
13-Apr-1
3
15-Apr-1
3
17-Apr-1
3
19-Apr-1
3
21-Apr-1
3
23-Apr-1
3
25-Apr-1
3
27-Apr-1
3
29-Apr-1
30
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
Visits
Visits, as an indication of the number of people going to CFR.org, was about 4-times greater than normal on April 19, as a result of an additional 100K people seeking our content.
Chechen Terrorism page received the traffic surge while other top pages remained unchanged.
Observations:• The additional 100K visits
focused on the Chechen Terrorism page.
• Before April 19, this page received fewer than 100 visits/day. On April 19 it received 92K visits. The popularity of this page lingered over the weekend to Monday, April 20-23, and the page earned another 8K visits.
• The other standard top performing pages on the site, including the homepage, careers, search, all remained unchanged as a result of this traffic surge.
1-Apr-13 8-Apr-13 15-Apr-13 22-Apr-13 29-Apr-130
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000Popular Pages
All Other Homepage Career Opportunities
The China-North Korea Relationship Search Internships
Mexico's Drug War About CFR The Future of U.S. Special Operations Forces
Chechen Terrorism (Russia, Chechnya, Separatist)
Visit
s
The method people used to find this content shifted from the standard.
Typical Patterns - Natural Search, indicated in purple on the above charts, is
usually the most popular method to visit the site with about 20K visits/day.
- Direct/No Referrer is second most popular, in green, at 10K visits/day.
- Managed traffic campaigns including Paid Search, Newsletters, and Facebook or Twitter are the next largest traffic segment with a combined total of about 3300 visits/day.
- The final portion of traffic comes from Other Referring Sites such as wikipedia, partner media sites, and others that choose to link to us with about 3100 visits/day .
On April 19- Natural Search doubled its usual number of visits.- Direct/No Referrer tripled its usual number of visits.- Twitter and Facebook exploded at 50-times and 30-times
their respective number of visits.- Other referring sites sent 6-times its usual number of
visits, and the number of sites that link to us went from 500/day to 700/day. Significant mentions include deadspin.com sending 5400 visits and geenstijl.nl sending 2200 visits.
- These massive shifts in traffic sources caused the overall percentages of sources to shift too.
- In comparison, managed traffic sources including Paid Search, RSS feeds, and Newsletter traffic performed at the same rate as a normal day of traffic.
1-Apr3-Apr
5-Apr7-Apr
9-Apr
11-Apr
13-Apr
15-Apr
17-Apr
19-Apr
21-Apr
23-Apr
25-Apr
27-Apr
29-Apr0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
Visits by Source
Paid Search RSS NLC Other Referring Sites
Twitter Facebook Natural Search Direct/No Referrer
1-Apr3-Apr
5-Apr7-Apr
9-Apr
11-Apr
13-Apr
15-Apr
17-Apr
19-Apr
21-Apr
23-Apr
25-Apr
27-Apr
29-Apr0%
10%20%
30%40%50%
60%70%
80%90%
100%
% Visits by Source
Paid Search RSS NLCOther Referring Sites Twitter FacebookNatural Search Direct/No Referrer
Search Patterns – standard keywords unaffected, Chechen keywords surge on April 19.
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
Search visits by keyword type
Branded Searches Chechnya Searches
Top Keywords April 1 - 18cfrcouncil on foreign relationsnews
council of foreign relationsterrorismraw indiacfr.orgsharia lawmercosursix party talksosama bin ladenresearch projectsaum shinrikyolibor scandalcouncil for foreign relationskorean warsanctioned countriesbbc newsnorth koreanuclear energycouncil foreign relationskorean war
Top Keywords April 19chechnya terrorismchechen terroristschechenchechen rebelschechnya russiachechenschechen terrorismcouncil on foreign relationscfrchechnya al qaedachechnya terroristschechnyan rebelschechen separatistsrussian terrorist groupschechen terrorist groupschechnya terroristrussia chechnyaare chechens muslimchechen terroristus chechen relationswhat is chechen
Observations:The keywords are heavily focused on Chechnya and terrorism on April 19. This is a significant shift from a combination of branded keywords, or a variety of unbranded keywords across multiple countries and current events.Our own brand names went from being the #1 keywords driving visits to our site, to #8 and #9 on the list.
Referring Sites not only sent more visits, but there were also more sites sending visits.
1-Apr3-Apr
5-Apr7-Apr
9-Apr
11-Apr
13-Apr
15-Apr
17-Apr
19-Apr
21-Apr
23-Apr
25-Apr
27-Apr
29-Apr0
2000400060008000
100001200014000160001800020000
Visits by Referring Sites
foreignaffairs.com All Other Referrers deadspin.comgeenstijl.nl washingtonpost.com news.com.ausalon.com newrepublic.com buzzfeed.comsofrep.com thegatewaypundit.com
1-Apr3-Apr
5-Apr7-Apr
9-Apr
11-Apr
13-Apr
15-Apr
17-Apr
19-Apr
21-Apr
23-Apr
25-Apr
27-Apr
29-Apr0
100200300400500600700800900
Number of Referring Sites
Top Referrers April 19
deadspin.com
geenstijl.nl
washingtonpost.com
news.com.au
salon.com
foreignaffairs.com
newrepublic.com
buzzfeed.com
sofrep.com
thegatewaypundit.com
uproxx.com
theatlanticcities.com
wikipedia.org
go.com
barstoolsports.com
nationalreview.com
hootsuite.com
iconfactory.com
andrewsullivan.com
Observations:- On a typical day, CFR.org receives, on average, 3,100 visits from 535 other
websites.- On April 19, CFR.org received over 20,000 visits from 787 other websites.- This is 6-times the normal number of visits, and a 47% lift in the number of
websites.- The lift in the number of websites linking in was sustained over the weekend
after April 19.- Most notable sites sending visits were deadspin.com with 5,700 visits and
greenstijl.com with 2,400 visits.- The list of referring sites indicates there were other media sites linking to
CFR as a reference for credibility.
The spike in visits to CFR.org happened early in the morning.
12:00 AM
1:00 AM
2:00 AM
3:00 AM
4:00 AM
5:00 AM
6:00 AM
7:00 AM
8:00 AM
9:00 AM
10:00 AM
11:00 AM
12:00 PM
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
3:00 PM
4:00 PM
5:00 PM
6:00 PM
7:00 PM
8:00 PM
9:00 PM
10:00 PM
11:00 PM
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
Visits by Time of Day
5-Apr 12-Apr 19-Apr
Observations:- Looking to the two previous
Fridays, indicated in the blue and red lines on this chart for a baseline, traffic usually peaks at two times of the day.
- The first peak is at 11 in the morning, when about 3500 visits hit the site. Traffic peaks again at 5 in the afternoon when the weekly newsletter is sent.
- On April 19, the majority of visits hit the site at 7 in the morning. Presumably, this is when the Chechen relationship to the Boston Marathon Bombers hit the media.
- The lift in visits was maintained all day, and the 2nd peak from Newsletter traffic was maintained, although it was not different from its typical Friday performance.
Mobile device traffic quadrupled on April 19.
- On a typical day, about 3K visits or 10% of total traffic views CFR.org from a mobile device.- On April 19, about 45K visits or 37% of total traffic viewed the site from a mobile device.- iOS visits had the most increase, 15-times the number of visits on a typical day.
1-Apr-13
3-Apr-13
5-Apr-13
7-Apr-13
9-Apr-13
11-Apr-13
13-Apr-13
15-Apr-13
17-Apr-13
19-Apr-13
21-Apr-13
23-Apr-13
25-Apr-13
27-Apr-13
29-Apr-13
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
% Visits from Mobile Devices
other mobile Android iOS non-mobile
1-Apr-13
3-Apr-13
5-Apr-13
7-Apr-13
9-Apr-13
11-Apr-13
13-Apr-13
15-Apr-13
17-Apr-13
19-Apr-13
21-Apr-13
23-Apr-13
25-Apr-13
27-Apr-13
29-Apr-13
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
Visits from Mobile Devices
iOS Android non-mobile other mobile
USA traffic had biggest increase, but Netherlands and Australia most significant percentage lift.
Apr 1, 2
013
Apr 2, 2
013
Apr 3, 2
013
Apr 4, 2
013
Apr 5, 2
013
Apr 6, 2
013
Apr 7, 2
013
Apr 8, 2
013
Apr 9, 2
013
Apr 10, 2
013
Apr 11, 2
013
Apr 12, 2
013
Apr 13, 2
013
Apr 14, 2
013
Apr 15, 2
013
Apr 16, 2
013
Apr 17, 2
013
Apr 18, 2
013
Apr 19, 2
013
Apr 20, 2
013
Apr 21, 2
013
Apr 22, 2
013
Apr 23, 2
013
Apr 24, 2
013
Apr 25, 2
013
Apr 26, 2
013
Apr 27, 2
013
Apr 28, 2
013
Apr 29, 2
013
Apr 30, 2
013
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
Visits by Country
All Other United Kingdom Canada India AustraliaNetherlands France Germany Pakistan IrelandJapan Singapore United States
Observations: • The largest portion of
visits, and the largest spike on April 19, come from the USA as indicated by the blue area on this chart.
• Several other countries sent an increased number of visits on April 19, including standard performers such as United Kingdom and Canada.
• The Netherlands and Australia had the largest percentage lifts over normal performance. Australia sent 380% of its normal traffic, while the Netherlands sent almost 14-times its usual amount of traffic.
Thank You!
Melanie EtchisonDigital Analytics ManagerCouncil on Foreign Relationsmetchison@cfr.orghttp://www.cfr.orghttp://foreignaffairs.com
top related