Some people use Twitter to organize street protests in Tehran. Some people use it to share their daily thoughts and observation. But it is increasingly becoming clear that one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor.
Over the past few months, TechCrunch has experienced the power of this micro-media firsthand as the percentage of traffic we get from Twitter has grown to the point that it is now our second largest source of outside traffic after Google. In the past 30 days, Twitter accounted for 9.7 percent of all traffic to Techcrunch.com, up from 1.8 percent six months ago. This is out of millions of visits.
Looking at our Google Analytics numbers, here is the breakdown of visits to TechCrunch by source over the past 30 days:
Top Sources of Traffic To TechCrunch
1. Google: 32.7%
2. Direct: 22.7%
3. Twitter: 9.7%
4. Digg: 7.4%
5. Techmeme: 2.4%
6. Other: 25.1%
Twitter has been rising up that chart, just recently surpassing Digg. TechCrunch is certainly not typical of most Websites, but this data certainly shows the potential of Twitter to generate traffic. A large portion of that traffic comes from the TechCrunch account on Twitter, which has nearly 715,000 followers (it is one of the accounts suggested to new users). For many people, Twitter is replacing their RSS readers. One of the ways we use that account is to Tweet out links to our stories, which then spread virally as followers retweet those links. Retweets are becoming a new type of link currency. We are big believers in retweets (in fact, there is now a retweet button at the bottom of every post).
About a month ago we started using Awe.sm, which lets us send out our own custom short links (http://tcrn.ch) and track how much traffic we get from them. About 73 percent of our Twitter traffic comes from people clicking on an http://tcrn.ch short link. Another 23 percent comes directly from Twitter.com via other short links such as bit.ly’s.
We can also approximate how much Twitter traffic comes from desktop and mobile clients. At least 44 percent of Twitter traffic comes from clients, and that counts people clicking directly on http://tcrn.ch links from those clients. So the true number is easily more than half.
For us, and I’d argue increasingly for other large Websites as well, Twitter is not just about micro-media. The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere. Or to put it another way, the shortened link may just be the most powerful type of micro-media there is. Those retweeted links are turning Twitter into a social broadcast media that rivals any other on the Web.
(Photo credit: Flickr/Brett Weinstein)
Top 5 TechCrunch Traffic Sources
I couldn’t agree with you more. I have been thinking about creating an account and following just the news and information sites I visit each day. Then check it every so often each day to get my news or even just pull the RSS data stream from that one account and read it instead of reading multiple feeds.
Excellent article!
Re-Tweeted!
I have been doing this for the last 1 month and I am loving it.
Brian, Erik – No doubting the stream is powerful.
I’ve been working on a theory which says that allowing people to share via Instant Messaging may drive more conversion (acquisition) of users.
Let me know your thoughts:
http://blogs.ms...a-postcard.aspx
I do just that from one of my other Twitter accounts, but TechCrunch and a few other publications are important enough that I follow them twice so I can instantly re-tweet from my main account.
Twitter is about discovery and virality of something hot(”link sharing” according to Fred Wilson, but its just discovery). So makes sense it would help lots of folks discover TC. Twitter is failing as a messaging or conversation platform, except for one way messages from famous people to their fans.
This are pretty amazing statistics. In my opinion Twitter will replace a blog’s RSS feed.
http://www.twibeo.com
A FriendFeed and Twitter combo. FF’s media sharing with Twitter’s simplicity.
Ya, the stats are really amazing. I will be checking my Twitter Traffic soon right now.
Regards,
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Adding to it; I think the “ReTweet” thing also have helped techcrunch in gaining the Twitter Traffic. Isn’t it?
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Me thinks that % of twitter leads will only get higher as time goes on?
Yeah, especially if they continue being a Twitter-centric blog. Amazing how that works.
Bet the traffic to twitter (outbound) is higher than the traffic to tech crunch from twitter.
Does the fact @TechCrunch is a suggested account mean you are more likely to report favourably about twitter?
Isn’t it a bit like accepting a free gift as a journalist? They send you lots of lovely free traffic for example.
“free” hmm. I bet Mike or Techcrunch have a good chunk of money invested in Twitter, like so many other media outlets, which is why twitter has been such a success over its competitors, some of which did what twitter did (and better) way before twitter existed.
It’s all in the power gathered by all the people vested in the company to overhype a service where the majority of the registered users just try it for a week and never come back.
I use the toolbar………….. how many % is that or is it calculated as direct
I want to see a comparison of percent twitter traffic vs percent of TC posts about twitter.
These number show a sad truth about TC. Deadpool.
Thank you! Let’s look at that data, if possible
This is very interesting analysis and useful for other people to understand what they can track. I completely agree on “Twitter is becoming more of knowledge/Information sharing medium than life streaming personal events”.
Also for my blog when I did analysis few weeks back,I found that Twitter sends more quality inbound traffic (avg time on site is very high) than other sources.Very soon Twitter will become the new human filter for finding useful information.
i have much less followers but I do see an increasing number of visitors from Twitter to my blog
“The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere.”
Given that most of the trending topics lately on Twitter have been about the Iranian election, I’m not sure that the most powerful Tweets are links…unless the “elsewhere” you refer to can be people & countries and not just websites & blogs.
how does google break down out of interest? is it google search or google reader/igoogle ?
Fascinating info – RTs indeed viral – wish more people understood the value – but, hey, more people need to read this article which is why I’ll RT it!
The retweet button?
Now there’s a stroke of genius..
Google traffic should be counted properly. Because people like me use google to navigate to Techcrunch. So these traffic should be counted as direct because my intent is come to Techcrunch, if there is no Google I will user other search engines or use bookmarks.
The easiest way to count Google traffic generation is counting only new visits from Google, olds visits from Google should be counted to direct traffic, and considered traffic generated by your brand names.
And more.
The traffic from Twitter is the most valuable (at least comparable to direct traffic), because when ppl click on the link of tweet, they make clear choice to read your article (after reading the tweet), so you have the chance to convert them to TC reader if they are new, or you just strengthen your realationship if they are old readers.
In contrast to Google traffic, it’s just randomly visited people that will never returned to your website. Do a deeper analytics and you will see proof for my claim
Oh really? So how is that different than clicking on any other link , even from a search engine? Especially when every link on Twitter is masked under a TinyURL. Twitter traffic is NOT more valuable then Google.
How amazing-not-that twitter is directing traffic here, when, from the narrow range of topics covered in the past few months, the name of this website would better be twitcrunch. More inane observations about an inane service. Clearly TC feels it has been losing the blog battles and is justified now in having gone all a twitter. Sad.
Twitter is great source of traffic but it is only for big brands like TechCrunch not for small bloggers, and I think at present TechCrunch has more than 700000 followers at twitter but six months before less than half followers should have TechCrunch, this is also a reason.
I think this isn’t a miracle, if 90% from 2 billion tweets contain at least on link
Surprised google’s not winning by more
oh …Great .
Top Sources of Traffic To TechCrunch
1. Google: 32.7%
2. Direct: 22.7%
3. Twitter: 9.7%
4. Digg: 7.4%
5. Techmeme: 2.4%
6. Other: 25.1%
Above lists .Google is the power one to TechCrunch .
Thanks
Alex
Second by all the third party referers, and then direct traffic. Twitter the list should be presented like this:
1. Google
2. Other
3. Direct
4. Twitter
5. Digg
6. Techmeme
and instead of saying this:
“witter has grown to the point that it is now our second largest source of outside traffic after Google”
they should say that it’s the 4th largest source of traffic. Sucks how biased this post is, to the point that techcrunch is ditching the power of all the blogs and newspapers online sending traffic back to it over Twitter.
I can say that I now use twitter instead of RSS to follow sites like this, so you can count my traffic to twitcrunch in the 9.7%
From Twitter or Twitter’s search?
yes twitter and related twittersites are coming massivly up, enjoy the hype for now.
And your article was well written, kudos
I’m surprised that your direct traffic is lower than your google traffic.
Interesting post, but I can’t help but wonder how much of the traffic coming to you from Twitter is *new* traffic. If anything I think this helps illustrate the weakness of RSS, aggregators, and readers in their inability to provide a useful service. Twitter, on the other hand, “saves” a user from having to read 10-15 posts on any blog prior to finding one of interest…
what about techcrunch toolbar how many % does that bring in ? …….
I just joining twitter. I’m so late ..
1. Advertising is a function of your traffic volume, the more traffic comes to your site, the higher rates you can charge.
2. Social sites such as Facebook and Twitter have a lot of link sharing going on as friends post links to share them with each other.
3. When Facebook and Twitter send more traffic than Google search referrals, advertising dollars will follow the source of that traffic.
4. Google’s dominance in online advertising will be threatened.
http://everwas....han-google.html
I also see twitter as an important marketing and traffic-generation source. Thanks for this insight.
Yeah great statistics so twitter is a big hit!!!
hope even i get traffic to my website from twitter!
Erick, any chance to compare the stats of techcrunch.com to the traffic of crunchgear.com in this regard?
The content of TC is to a certain degree about Twitter and social media in general, which could influence the behavior and viewing patterns.
Would be interesting to see how Twitter works for driving users to content that is not about the media itself, but about hardware and devices (in other words: how much Twitter can be a generic consumer interest driver).
One further question: Is the TC RSS feed included in the 25% other or counted as direct? Do you mind to break that out?
How much does the other 25% breakout?
Another interesting observation.
Twitter, Techmeme & Digg have ZERO revenues and thus proof that they may be just flavors of the month.
LOL, what a joke dude.
Hey Erick,
Two questions,
1) Did you guys use Google Analytics to get these results.
2) If not than what did you use?
What surprises me is not the Twitter result but your Digg.
yep, ya use twitter right, ya get 10% of traffic from it. works for anyone using twitter right. nothing new
Were tc tweets generated automatically or manually? It’
Wow. The amount of twitter traffic this site has is pretty amazing which means a lot of your articles are being tweeted by twitter users.
#cnnfail
You are missing teh story, all the Twitter coverage on this site and you miss the biggest Twitter centric story so far?
Twitter is a social marketer’s new wet dream.
Much better than Facebook
http://www.traderbots.com
Instant Messaging is http://blogs.ms...a-postcard.aspx
Nah, Instant messaging isn’t.
A friend of mine comes giving me links 2 times, and the next time I’ll block him forever.
Plus you can’t search instant messaging, so link distribution only lasts very little, that’s the power of twitter, you can search other people talking about thinks you actually care.
And Twitter is just another form of IM, an open searcheable IM system
Twitter has been proven as major tool for all tech business.
But I’m sorry to say that Twitter does not appears useful in other business branches. At least for the moment.
I’m in wellness business and I put lots of effort in my company tweets but overall feedback was pretty poor. Most of people on Twitter are geeks and they are searching for geek stuff. Wellness & health is not much of interest for them.
I hope this will change soon and more people who are not just obsessed with iPhones or G1s will use it.
Until than, lets get ready for queing for new iPhone
Well, its not twitter that surprised me here, but its techmeme where TC is #1 and contributing almost 8.53% articles for techmeme and still its driving less traffic compared to twitter !!
RSS may be dead, but this birdie is very much alive.
Here is some rough personal “how i get to TC” stats:
Twitter: 60%
FriendFeed 20%
Techmeme: 14%
Kindle: 5%
Digg: 1%
RSS Reader: 0%
What about traffic from your daily headlines email? Is this represented in the pie? I would expect the twitter referrals to somewhat cannibalize the email referrals as more and more people use twitter (and associated apps like tweetdeck) and are alerted to articles in real-time.
And the more its goes the more “Social bookmarking” are using Twitter as a final delivery system. Such as Diigo Twine Jamespot …
Excepting Facebook that is an “integrated system” and ha its own Twitts mechanism (but with friends) not followers…
For Twitter, TechCrunch = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown) Coming Soon!
Curious… I’m subscribed to the Techcrunch RSS feed through Google Reader. So does that count as if I’m a visitor from Google? I wonder how much of the 33% from Google is RSS vs search.
Twitter is good when you happen to have it open. Otherwise you’d miss tons of stuff. Long Live RSS!
If you are using Google Analytics, you will only see the incoming Twitter traffic from those using the webinterface. Those using desktop applications to access Twitter, will show as direct traffic…
I did an experiment with two of my (average) aggregator blogs. Created a Twitter account, with nothing else but a Twitterfeed posting new updates. On one blog, the traffic went from 20/day to 200/day, on the other, from 10 to 120, as of one day after I created the Twitter accounts.
I described the experiment here: http://www.blog...n-3-easy-steps/
Peter
Chart looks kind of weird because you have other sources too right? Should have included an other to make the circle more accurate
“You scratch my back, I scratch yours”. Nothing wrong here, just business of course.
Honestly, taking into account the amount of followers and retweets / tweets Techcrunch gets I would have thought the percentage would have been higher….at least somewhere near 15%
Yes, thanks for this article. I had noticed this some time ago, I reallyn appreciate your blog and am aggregatinging it to my social network designed for students studying a Web Diploma in Australia and other web minded community members. I”m wondering where we’re headee next.???
tony Hogan – Worlds best acoustic guitar blogger
So by showing us these numbers, do you mean Twitter is the way to go? That it’s better to focus on getting Twitter traffic more than my blog’s traffic? Thanks!
Sooo true! I’ve also found that Twitter is the second biggest source of traffic for my blog behind Google. It’s just edging out Facebook. Very, very impressive.