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

At this time, Elon Musk pinned this submit on his timeline, which purportedly exhibits 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 web optimization administration platform SEMRush, shows web site site visitors solely, and doesn’t embody 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, based mostly 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, in fact, is why X noticed such an enormous spike in site visitors in April final yr?

As I’ve coated beforehand, natural site visitors to www.twitter.com, based mostly 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 soar?

I requested SEMRush, and this was their rationalization:

“Upon reviewing the report, there seems to be a misunderstanding concerning the natural site visitors values. The spike noticed within the information corresponds with an replace we carried out. This replace, executed on April sixth, resulted in further information being integrated into our metrics (that’s the SERP Options). Consequently, this led to spikes in figures in our toolkit throughout all web sites, not solely 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, in fact, benefited X’s site visitors numbers considerably.

“The exceptional improve in site visitors statistics you noticed and are referring to displays a major replace in our information assortment methodology at SEMRush […] A good portion of the noticed site visitors improve, particularly for domains like Twitter.com, might be attributed to the inclusion of Twitter SERP Options in our monitoring.”

So the soar in April final yr will not be reflective of a site visitors improve for X in any respect, and is nearly fully linked to this replace.

Which can also be why this report doesn’t align with different third occasion experiences 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 each day energetic customers since Musk took over on the app.
• SimilarWeb, which reported that X has seen a 14% decline in cell and internet visits since September 2022.
• AppAnnie’s 2023 “State of Cell” report, which discovered that X’s month-to-month energetic person depend declined considerably between 2022 and 2023.
• Sensor Tower’s latest 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, based mostly on person surveys.

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

It’s not essentially shedding site visitors both, based mostly on this. However the concept X might have in some way tripled its internet site visitors, and maintained the very same quantity of general customers appears implausible.

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

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