If Paper Magazine didn’t quite “break the Internet” last month when it put the glistening derriere of one Kim Kardashian on its cover, it did manage to drive a whole lot of Web traffic. November data released by tracking site Compete.com show that the PaperMag.com site managed to attract “nearly 1 percent of the entire Internet browsing population of the U.S.” on Nov. 13, the day after the article — wait, there was an article? — got posted.
That surge lifted Paper's site to the top of Compete’s Monthly Fast Movers list, with nearly 4 million unique visitors for the month, representing growth of 2,739 percent from the previous month and 18,810 percent from the previous November. Either Americans in general are really interested in Kim Kardashian’s booty or we’re less interested in whatever else Paper was publishing.
Or both. About a quarter of the search traffic bringing visitors to the site was for the keywords “Kim Kardashian” and what Compete calls “Kim Kardashian-related keywords” accounted for 75 of the top 100 searches that drew users to PaperMag.com. As Compete’s Eric Keating pointed out in a blog post, “many of those new visitors seemingly came just for that article and didn’t return” — meaning that even though 2014 was The Year of the Booty, Paper’s bump wasn’t quite as huge as it might have been.
Related: Proposing the Kimye Way — Why Romance Is Getting Really Expensive
While Black Friday sites offering coupons and sales information were the next biggest monthly gainers in November, Compete’s Yearly Fast Movers list includes at least a few media successes that weren’t driven by a Kardashian. See the top 10 below:
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
