Elon Musk’s X lost over half-a-billion user visits in September

 X Corp (formerly Twitter) lost over half-a-billion user visits in September, and the Elon Musk-run platform has now dropped to seventh place on the global ranking, behind Instagram.

Last month, X's traffic dropped from 6.4 billion to 5.8 billion, a loss of 10 per cent, according to new SimilarWeb data. Of the 176 countries that visited X in September, 83 per cent saw a month-on-month decline in visits.

Google data also revealed that global searches for X have dropped since Musk's takeover of the company last year, down from 14 million monthly searches to 11 million a year later, the lowest since November 2018.

"SimilarWeb traffic shows that Twitter is quickly losing traffic and has already slipped in global rankings. Since Musk took over, its popularity appears to be declining," a Venture Smarter spokesperson said.

It is staggering to see traffic drop from hundreds of countries, and it could well be X's behind-the-scenes efforts to combat bots. "However, as Musk has said recently, the 1$ charge may be the 'only way to fight bots', it looks more likely that users are switching off from the platform," the spokesperson added.

Musk on Friday said X will soon roll out two new paid premium tiers and one of that tier with ads will cost lower than the current $8 a month.

Earlier this week, the tech billionaire said that in order to tackle bots, new X users will need to pay $1 per year to post on the platform, although they can read other posts for free.