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.

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3

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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.

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29-Apr0

20,000

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Visits by Source

Paid Search RSS NLC Other Referring Sites

Twitter Facebook Natural Search Direct/No Referrer

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% 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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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% Visits from Mobile Devices

other mobile Android iOS non-mobile

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Visits from Mobile Devices

iOS Android non-mobile other mobile

USA traffic had biggest increase, but Netherlands and Australia most significant percentage lift.

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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