Lot's of questions this week from customers asking about t.co in their Google Analytics. Great news is that t.co appearing in your referral traffic is not Ghost Spam. (Read more about Ghost Spam here).
So what is t.co? The simple and non-geeky answer is that it traffic coming from Twitter. It is a wonderful and valid source. If you're keeping it simple... you're done : )
The medium geeky answer is that in 2010, Twitter started using it's own link shortener (like bit.ly and tinyurl). So anytime that you either compose a Tweet on Twitter or click a Twitter button on a site to share content, Twitter shortens the URL using their own t.co program.
It benefits the user because shorter links use less characters. It also claims to "scan" the page that is being linked to prevent malware. Hence there is some page validation going on.
It benefits Twitter because Twitter can take advantage of the marketing information that they can garner from posts and interactions rather than letting third party apps (again like bit.ly or tinyurl) get that information. That information is gold in marketing. That's part of how url shorteners stay "free" on the web. They are gathering marketing info. Not in an evil way, mind you. They are simply measuring engagement, how a person got to the page before they clicked, how many people engage with different content etc. This information is used to help people do targeted marketing.
As a small to medium business owner, I will be encouraging you to do some targeted marketing and will show you how.
Let us know if you have any questions!
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AND Have a lovely day : )
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