After severing ties with LinkedIn, Twitter inadvertently helped opponent Facebook snag 1000% more page referrals from the professional social network.

PageLever, an analytics tool for Facebook pages, points to Twitter's June 29 decision to stop syncing updates with LinkedIn as an explanation for the spike.

"The spike happened because without Twitter, there is now a significantly lower volume of content in the LinkedIn News Feed, and therefore less competition for clicks and attention," Brendan Irvine-Broque, PageLever's director of growth, tells Mashable in an email. "So any non-Twitter content (including links to Facebook Pages and Page Posts) is performing much better than before."

Irvine-Broque adds that the spike happened "immediately after the change."

Referral traffic jumped by 1000% in July, compared to any single previous month, according to the firm. The data assessed how much traffic LinkedIn sent to more than 500 Facebook pages that had between 100,000 and 1,000,000 fans. Check out the graph below for a clear comparison.

PageLever also says LinkedIn drives more referral traffic to Facebook Pages than Google and Bing combined, as demonstrated by this graph:

In a blog post, company co-founder Jeff Widman does emphasize, however, that LinkedIn "wasn't driving a lot of traffic in the first place."

Still, the firm says it may be worthwhile to cross-post Facebook posts to LinkedIn, now more than ever.

While LinkedIn users can still create an update on the site and opt to share that on Twitter, the reverse is no longer possible. The social networks' three-year partnership began in 2009.

In recent times, Twitter has cut off third-party clients from its ecosystem, announcing stricter API rules last month. It described the changes as a way to foster a “consistent Twitter experience” across devices and platforms.

In light of these findings, what do you think of Twitter's decision to cut off LinkedIn? Discuss in the comments.