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Comment by pdq | Hacker News Reader

This metric is not quite accurate, but Google Trends [1] gives a decent overview of how Twitter has been on the decline for the past 3 years.

Instagram has surpassed them in search traffic. Snapchat is more than a year away, but given how young they are is quite impressive.

[1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=snapchat#q=snapchat%...

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Am I the only person who finds a huge amount of my Instagram (60%+) clicks and likes is really automated spam bots? I really feel like the service is particularly prone to it...not that Twitter and BookFace aren't also...

It's really bad. For me it's well over 60%. I've started "sharing" those bots with @instagram with sarcastic comments.

How exactly do you know it's not accurate? If you're saying that because of Google trends, keep in mind that Twitter is a website, Snapchat is not. Lots of people still google "Twitter" to get to the homepage. Pretty much no one would be googling snapchat...

EDIT: March and April saw over 9,000,000 searches.

On average, 5,000,000 people google 'snapchat' every single month.

Source: Google Keyword Planner

But that's exactly the point. Search volume isn't the same thing as usage.

How does Instagram surpass Twitter in Search traffic - what can you even search on Instagram? I thought it is mostly pictures. Or are people just searching for porn on Instagram?

I would guess most searches for both platforms are of the (person) (Twitter/Instagram) format.

Both of these are incorrect.

You can search for hashtags, users, and locations on Instagram, both on mobile and desktop now.

If clicking to browse a hashtag is considered "searching", I could see this.

Instagram also aggressively bans nudity and other reported terms violations.

(I believe OP was referring to Google search traffic to either platform though.)

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