X appears to be sending bogus web traffic

X’s new link experience on iOS may artificially inflate traffic. Sites like Substack and Bluesky have noticed a sharp increase in “Fake” viewpoints. After the update, which Nick Eubanks, VP of Owned Media at digital marketing platform Semrush, attributes to the new behavior of pre-loading content before users click on it.

“What’s happening here is a classic case of metrics distortion caused by the product experience at the platform layer,” Eubanks says. Edge. with The new experienceX will collapse the post when you click its link, allowing you to interact with the Like, Repost, Reply, and Bookmark buttons while viewing the web page. Previously, when X’s in-app browser opened a link in a post, the loaded page would block the entire X post, affecting interaction with X’s original content.

“The new Browser He adds that this “amplifies analytics in several key ways,” including by increasing the visibility of click-through rates and tricking advertisers, publishers, and creators into thinking they are seeing more traffic, when that may not “correlate with real human traffic.”

These issues came to light to Substack CEO Chris Best, who was initially impressed by the increase in traffic to his site after the X update Before you realize “Most virtual lifts are fake.” However, better says Substack Still saw Increased traffic “even after correcting fake views.”

Paul Frazee, Product Manager at Bluesky, It also says new X The preloading system “messed up” the site’s metrics to measure logged out daily active users. “X started opening links in the background to make them load faster…but it caused a bunch of other sites to get additional traffic that looked real,” Frazee adds.

Product header says Nikita Beer The new link setting addresses a common complaint from content creators, who often find posts with less reach on the platform. “This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to like or reply,” Pierre writes. “So X doesn’t get a clear indication of whether the content is good or not.”

Although preloading can help boost engagement on X, it can ultimately hurt creators and publishers outside of X by making it more difficult to source their traffic. “We are entering an era in which inflating metrics through interface tricks, preloading, automation, and AI summarization is blurring the line between user interaction and machine behavior,” says Eubanks. “Platforms that want credibility with creators and advertisers will need to be transparent about how they calculate engagement, separating previews from personas.”