Twitter Effect Affects Stats

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Posted by: mamlin 7/30/2009 11:49 AM

Yesterday our site visits spiked and we recorded a new high in unique daily visitors -- nearly 8% above the previous high.  It seems that Twitter deserves some credit...
 
Blogs posts = Visits
Blog postings are what bring visitors to our site since, well, that's the only public content we currently offer.  We have our RSS subscribers so each new blog posting brings an immediate, brief surge of visitors.  Yesterday, though, saw the largest surge yet following a new post -- much higher than usual.  What was different this time?  Twitter.

Twitter Twitter Twitter...
Are you tied of hearing about Twitter?  I am.  But I'm hardly tired of using it.  Twitter makes it too easy to keep up with the pulse of news/events and the things people you are interested in happen to find interesting themselves. 
 
Twitter is also a great-but-still-largely-untouched (compared to other channels) promotional tool.  Yesterday I sent a single tweet linking to the latest ES blog posting.  Nothing else was any different than normal for publishing a new post yet the site set a record high for unique visitors that day.  Sure, the post had the word "free" in the title but it was hardly the first posting I've released with emphasis on the word "free".  I have to assume (or at least strongly suspect) that the single Tweet helped drive new (and immediate) traffic.
 
Better GA Stats?
This sets the stage for a future post regarding the best way to record stats for Twitter-generated traffic.  I suspect a majority of hard-core Twitter users employ some third-party application to send and receive tweets.  Clicking on a link from such tools will most likely result in a "direct traffic" stat rather than a "site referral" under Google Analytics.  There are a few different ways to differentiate Twitter-generated traffic from true "direct traffic" -- I'll now be looking more closely at these options and share my personal pick if I determine a clear favorite.

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