1. Observations on CFR.org
Website Traffic Surge Due to
Chechnya Terrorism Scare and
the Boston Marathon Bombings.
May 8, 2014

2. 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

3. Timeline of Events
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Monday April 15, 2013
Day of Attack on Boston
Marathon Finish Line
Friday April 19, 2013
Day of Boston Lockdown and
Manhunt
APRIL2013

4. 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

5. Visits to CFR.org surged on April 19.
0
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.

6. 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.
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
1-Apr-13 8-Apr-13 15-Apr-13 22-Apr-13 29-Apr-13
Visits
Popular 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)

7. 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.
0
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
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1-Apr 8-Apr 15-Apr 22-Apr 29-Apr
% Visits by Source
Paid Search RSS NLC
Other Referring Sites Twitter Facebook
Natural Search Direct/No Referrer

8. Search Patterns – standard keywords
unaffected, Chechen keywords surge on
April 19.
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
1-Apr-13 8-Apr-13 15-Apr-13 22-Apr-13 29-Apr-13
Search visits by keyword type
Branded Searches Chechnya Searches
Top Keywords April 1 - 18
cfr
council on foreign relations
news
council of foreign relations
terrorism
raw india
cfr.org
sharia law
mercosur
six party talks
osama bin laden
research projects
aum shinrikyo
libor scandal
council for foreign relations
korean war
sanctioned countries
bbc news
north korea
nuclear energy
council foreign relations
korean war
Top Keywords April 19
chechnya terrorism
chechen terrorists
chechen
chechen rebels
chechnya russia
chechens
chechen terrorism
council on foreign relations
cfr
chechnya al qaeda
chechnya terrorists
chechnyan rebels
chechen separatists
russian terrorist groups
chechen terrorist groups
chechnya terrorist
russia chechnya
are chechens muslim
chechen terrorist
us chechen relations
what 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.

9. Referring Sites not only sent more visits, but
there were also more sites sending visits.
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
1-Apr 8-Apr 15-Apr 22-Apr 29-Apr
Visits by Referring Sites
foreignaffairs.com All Other Referrers deadspin.com
geenstijl.nl washingtonpost.com news.com.au
salon.com newrepublic.com buzzfeed.com
sofrep.com thegatewaypundit.com
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1-Apr 8-Apr 15-Apr 22-Apr 29-Apr
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.

10. The spike in visits to CFR.org happened
early in the morning.
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.

11. 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.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1-Apr-13 8-Apr-13 15-Apr-13 22-Apr-13 29-Apr-13
% Visits from Mobile Devices
other mobile Android iOS non-mobile
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
1-Apr-13 8-Apr-13 15-Apr-13 22-Apr-13 29-Apr-13
Visits from Mobile Devices
iOS Android non-mobile other mobile

12. USA traffic had biggest increase, but
Netherlands and Australia most significant
percentage lift.
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
Apr 1, 2013 Apr 8, 2013 Apr 15, 2013 Apr 22, 2013 Apr 29, 2013
Visits by Country
All Other United Kingdom Canada India Australia
Netherlands France Germany Pakistan Ireland
Japan 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.

13. Thank You!
Melanie Etchison
Digital Analytics Manager
Council on Foreign Relations
metchison@cfr.org
http://www.cfr.org
http://foreignaffairs.com