Twitter Web Analytics enables companies to understand Tweet traffic

One of the major challenges that websites have faced when using Twitter is that they don't exactly understand how much traffic, and therefore the financial benefit, they’re receiving by using Twitter.

For the most part, Twitter hasn't done much until now to answer this problem. The micro-blogging giant got the ball rolling a few weeks ago with the debut of the t.co link shortener.

To continue even further, the San Francisco-based company rolled out Twitter Web Analytics. This by no means the end-all answer to Twitter's traffic questions, but Twitter reps acknowledged at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 that that this is a "fundamental" first step.

Basically, this is the first way for every website using Twitter to track its reach across the web for all of its content. Using TechCrunch.com -- appropriately enough considering the event -- as an example, Twitter Web Analytics delivered real-time data for the last seven days.

Within that week, TechCrunch saw close to 100,000 tweets with links to its content, which evolved into roughly 523,300 clicks back to the site. That averages out to one tweet equals five click-backs.

Other facets of the analytics platform also enables site managers to see what content is driving the most traffic and most shared items. Additionally, it can help developers play around with and determine where a Tweet button might fit on the site best.

Although Twitter admitted that most of its larger corporate partners already use third-party services for more advanced and complex analytics results, Twitter will be rolling out the system to a small beta group first and then to all website owners within the next few weeks.

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