Rolling Stone Magazine last week published a tell-all account that led to the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal. On June 23, the day after the article appeared online, www.rollingstone.com became the #402 ranked website among All Categories of websites, up from #5,094 the day before the article appeared. Market share of Internet visits to the website increased 160x in the seven days to June 23. Rolling Stone ranked as the #41 most visited News and Media website on June 23
Two thirds (66) of the top 100 search terms sending visits to the Rolling Stone Magazine website last week related to the article. The only other celebrities whose names were included in search terms sending visits to the site were Lady Gaga and Taylor Lautner.
The article, subsequent apology and resignation were big news. The News and Media industry experienced a 7% gain in visits last week. The following table displays the top 10 websites receiving visits from searches for “stanley mcchrystal” (the highest volume search term last week with the General’s family name).

This is a great example of a news organization making the news. Because of the way search engines work, the top search term, “stanley mcrystal” sent visits to a host of websites with Rolling Stone coming in at #9 last week. Even for searches for which Rolling Stone appeared at the top of the organic results, the Google News shortcut appeared ahead of the top organic listing. If Rolling Stone Magazine wanted to draw more readers to the orignial article and its follow up articles, the only real option to stay at the top of the search engine resutls would have been to pay for visits. The CPC would have been low since 99% of clicks on most McChrystal related searches were on organic listings last week.