The impact of going viral on SEO for businesses may not be as significant as initially thought. Despite the tremendous traffic and backlinks that come with viral events, these do not necessarily translate into improved rankings for local businesses. The case of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which gained immense attention after a political press conference was held at its premises by mistake, shows that most of the traffic gains are for branded terms or people looking for merchandise, not for the main business. While the company gained a wealth of high DR links, these did not significantly affect its SEO. On the other hand, Gravity Payments, a company whose CEO made headlines for cutting his own salary to pay his employees $70k, gained tons of links over the years that did not really help its traffic or its ranking for main terms or informational content. Similarly, Layoffs.fyi, a site that connects laid-off individuals with hiring managers, saw its unbranded term “layoff” change from “what is a layoff” to news about layoffs, possibly due to its growing popularity, but the impact of viral links is unclear. SEOs may overvalue links from media sites since they do not seem to have a significant impact on SEO. Nonetheless, digital PR campaigns can still raise awareness, improve branding, and generate leads. It might also be worthwhile to devote more attention to local and niche links rather than solely focusing on creative digital PR campaigns.