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How to see which posts on X bring you paying customers

Every click from X arrives as t.co, so most analytics lumps all your posts together. Here is how per-post attribution works and how to find the posts that actually sell.

NoirTrack team · · 4 min read

A social post card connected by a glowing line to a payment receipt

If you build in public, X is probably one of your biggest traffic sources. And yet most analytics tools show it as a single line: t.co, a few hundred visitors, done. You cannot tell the thread that went viral from the reply that sold five licenses.

That matters, because on X a handful of posts usually does almost all the work. Knowing which ones lets you write more like them.

Why everything from X shows up as t.co

Every link posted on X is wrapped in a short link, https://t.co/abc123. When someone clicks it, they pass through t.co on the way to your site. Browsers then send your site a referrer, but these days they usually send only https://t.co/, without the code that would identify the post. So the trail stops at "came from X".

How per-post attribution works

To get from "came from X" to "came from this post", you need to know which posts link to your site in the first place. The steps:

  1. Find the posts. Search X for posts that link to your domain. X's search can match the expanded link, not just the visible text, so posts that only show a t.co link are still found.
  2. Record the short links. Each post's t.co codes are saved together with the post's URL.
  3. Match the clicks. A visit with a full t.co code goes straight to its post. A visit with only https://t.co/ goes to a post when there is exactly one recent post linking to you. When several recent posts could have sent it, it stays as "t.co" rather than guessing.
  4. Fix the past. When a new post is found, earlier visits that match it are moved to it, so a post that sold before it was spotted still gets its credit.

In NoirTrack this runs on its own once Social mentions is watching X for your site. Each post then shows up in the Sources card as its own row, like x.com/yourname/status/1234, with its visitors and revenue. The X posts tab lists only those, and the arrow next to each one opens the post.

Getting the most accurate numbers

  • Space out posts with links. When two link posts go out the same day, a click that only says t.co cannot be told apart. A few hours between them helps.
  • Add UTM tags when it matters. For a launch post, add ?utm_source=x&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch to the link. Tags survive every redirect. See the UTM guide.
  • Connect your payment provider. Visits only become revenue when sales are matched to visitors. See revenue attribution.
  • Look at revenue per post, not likes. A post with 30 likes that sold three subscriptions beats a viral joke that sold nothing.

What to do with the results

After a month, sort your X posts by revenue. Look at the top three. They usually share something: a specific problem, a screenshot of real numbers, a clear call to action. Write more of that. Look at the posts with lots of visitors and no sales too: they tell you what attracts curious people rather than buyers.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my analytics show t.co instead of the actual post?

X wraps every link in a t.co short link, and browsers usually pass only https://t.co/ as the referrer. The post itself is not in the visit data, so it has to be matched by finding the posts that link to your site.

Can I track revenue from a specific tweet?

Yes. Once visits are matched to posts and sales are matched to visitors, each post shows the revenue from the visitors it sent.

Does this work for posts by other people?

Yes. Any public post that links to your site can be found and matched, including posts by customers and fans. That is often where the best traffic comes from.

Do I still need UTM tags on X?

They are not required, but they make attribution certain for important posts, because tags travel with the link through every redirect.