This comes back to which media Forbes looked at. Did they look at only the English-language media, did they look all English-language media around the world, or did they only look at American sources? Furthermore, did they just look at print media or did they include television? I don't know of any database that allows people to search news program transcripts from several network sources like exist for newspapers. Forbes would have had to check each network's own database, which can get time consuming. Instead, they might have only looked at a few networks – if they looked at all – and those might have all been American. We don't know because Forbes was not specific about which press they looked at.
What I'm saying is a woman might have had a lot of coverage but not been ranked particularly high because of the media sources Forbes excluded.
As for the YouTube coverage, we need to consider the time frame Forbes used when looking at press mentions. For example, did they only look at press coverage during the 2007 calendar year. If so, the YouTube coverage would not have been included in their calculations for 2008. The YouTube stuff might affect her ranking next year.
I also think her short YouTube experiment is the source of much of the recent increased coverage you're sensing. Rania typically talks to the BBC and each of the American networks at least once a year, as well as to some newspapers. I haven't noted an increase in that in recent years.
