No, X Isn’t Seeing ‘All Time High’ Site visitors

Whether or not Elon Musk’s X (previously Twitter) challenge is performing nice or not, X is doing itself no favors with its repeated amplification of deceptive, and/or incorrect, stats.

Immediately, Elon Musk pinned this submit on his timeline, which purportedly reveals that X is reaching new highs in site visitors.

However that’s not what this chart signifies.

First off, the chart, which has been sourced from search engine marketing administration platform SEMRush, shows web site site visitors solely, and doesn’t embrace app utilization. Round 80% of X’s utilization comes by way of the app, so that is solely a minor fraction of X’s general utilization information, primarily based particularly on visits to www.x.com (or www.twitter.com).

So it’s not indicative of general site visitors, and/or utilization of the app.

However the greater query about this chart, after all, is why X noticed such an enormous spike in site visitors in April final yr?

As I’ve covered previously, natural site visitors to www.twitter.com, primarily based on SEMRush’s information, went from round a billion per day, on common, up until April fifth 2023, to greater than 2 billion simply two days later, on April seventh. Since then it’s continued to extend, and is now as much as a median of round 3 billion per day.

However nothing particular occurred in April final yr. So why the leap?

I requested SEMRush, and this was their clarification:

“Upon reviewing the report, there appears to be a misunderstanding about the organic traffic values. The spike observed in the data corresponds with an update we implemented. This update, executed on April 6th, resulted in additional data being incorporated into our metrics (that is the SERP Features). Consequently, this led to spikes in figures in our toolkit across all websites, not exclusively Twitter.”

In different phrases, SEMRush modified its reporting methodology to incorporate SERP Options, the breakout panels in Google Search that present, amongst different issues, X posts associated to your search time period.

Which, after all, benefited X’s site visitors numbers considerably.

“The remarkable increase in traffic statistics you observed and are referring to reflects a significant update in our data collection methodology at SEMRush […] A significant portion of the observed traffic increase, especially for domains like Twitter.com, can be attributed to the inclusion of Twitter SERP Features in our tracking.”

So the leap in April final yr just isn’t reflective of a site visitors improve for X in any respect, and is nearly fully linked to this replace.

Which can be why this report doesn’t align with different third occasion stories that we’ve reported on, together with:

• Apptopia’s report, launched in October final yr, which confirmed that X has seen a 13% decline in day by day energetic customers since Musk took over on the app.
• SimilarWeb, which reported that X has seen a 14% decline in cellular and internet visits since September 2022.
• AppAnnie’s 2023 “State of Mobile” report, which discovered that X’s month-to-month energetic consumer depend declined significantly between 2022 and 2023.
• Sensor Tower’s current replace, which confirmed that X utilization has declined 18% year-over-year
• Edison Analysis’s Infinite Dial report for 2023, which signifies that X has seen a 30% decline in utilization, primarily based on consumer surveys.

Certainly, X itself reported in November 2022 that it had 250 million day by day energetic customers, which is the very same quantity it reported again this month, which means that it isn’t seeing any main spike in utilization.

It’s not essentially dropping site visitors both, primarily based on this. However the concept that X might have someway tripled its internet site visitors, and maintained the very same quantity of general customers appears implausible.

Except a heap of individuals stopped utilizing the cellular app, and began utilizing it on internet as an alternative. Which appears equally uncertain.

Basically, the chart that Elon is amplifying doesn’t display the speedy development that he’s suggesting. It simply raises extra questions on all the information that X shares, and the accuracy of its reporting, versus showcasing its success.