New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS): X Corp (Formerly Twitter) lost over half a billion user visits last month, and the Elon Musk-run platform has now dropped to seventh place on the global ranking, behind Instagram.

In September, 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 Twitter in September, 83 per cent saw a month-on-month decline in visits.

The analysis of the data by Venture Smarter revealed that X has now dropped to seventh place on global rankings behind Meta-owned Instagram.

Of the 176 countries that accessed Twitter in September, over four-fifths (83 per cent) saw a decline in month-over-month traffic to the website.

Google data also revealed that global searches for Twitter 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 Twitter'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 that 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.