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Twitter has incurred a significant loss of traffic globally after it limited the number of tweets accounts could view in a day.
According to data provided by Sistrix, Twitter has seen its visibility plummet by 25% in critical markets such as the United Kingdom (28% drop), France (17% drop), Italy (26% drop), Germany (25% drop), and Spain (14% drop).
Twitter chief technology officer Elon Musk said the move was intended to curb data scraping and ensure optimal experience. However, these updates have resulted in unanticipated setbacks, with Twitter experiencing a substantial 30% decrease in global organic traffic over the past 24-48 hours.
Data by Sistrix
Separate research by Evolving Digital, utilising top SEO tools like Ahrefs & SEMRush, shows that Twitter’s projected traffic in Australia dropped by 34.6% over the past eight days, representing a loss of 3.3 million compared to the preceding week.
Tweet views now limited for free users
Last week, Musk introduced temporary daily limits on the number of tweet views, with verified accounts restricted to 10,000, unverified accounts 1,000, and new unverified accounts 500 posts per day.
Musk said the new limits were “to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits.”
Twitter’s diminishing search visibility has triggered a reshuffling of Google’s search rankings, allowing competitor domains such as theguardian.com, instagram.com, facebook.com, rottentomatoes.com, linkedin.com, and spotify.com to benefit. These domains have gained a significant advantage, attracting users who might have previously turned to Twitter.
Twitter, a platform thriving on real-time discussions and news, relies heavily on its Google visibility to attract new users and retain casual visitors. The decline in search visibility obstructs the discovery of new content, prompting users to seek alternative platforms and posing a significant challenge to Twitter’s relevance, growth, and user engagement metrics.
Despite Musk’s businesses traditionally not relying heavily on search traffic, Twitter stands apart with search forming a critical part of its user acquisition strategy. This major setback sparks questions about Twitter’s ability to recover its lost search visibility and the potential impact on its business over time.
Twitter’s recovery will hinge on how effectively it addresses these issues. Google’s algorithms consider a site’s history; thus, a prolonged decrease in visibility could pose obstacles in regaining lost rankings. Nonetheless, the dynamic nature of the internet ecosystem leaves room for recovery. If Twitter can promptly address these issues, it stands a chance of regaining its lost visibility and rankings.
