Did you notice lots of glitches with Facebook over the past few weeks? They rolled out loads of changes to their ads manager and we are loving all the new features – but they have also announced changes to the organic page too. It is important you pay attention to these changes as they will affect data tracking but importantly – they will affect reporting data especially year on year / month on month analysis. They are also removing gray verification badges by the end of the month – which explains why the feature wasn’t there when I was in the middle of my training last week! Facebook could improve their communications in advance – it is very typical of Facebook to roll out changes and then remember to tell us all weeks after it has happened!
Facebook’s making a couple of changes to business Pages, which will impact both presentation and data tracking elements.
Marketing Land reported that page owners will begin receiving notices this week that the badges are going away starting October 30.
Sure enough, the notifications have started to come through. And in true Facebook style when you select ‘Learn More’ you get served this up!
There was always some confusion around what verification actually meant but here is Facebook’s official explanation of the difference between having the gray badge and being blue badge verified:
Facebook are basically doing away with gray badge verification because users were confused about what it represented.
More importantly is the fact that Facebook have indicated that they are changing the way in which it calculates organic Page impressions. This means that there will likely be a reduction in Facebook Page and post reach and so the data will be significantly reduced. For an agency like ours – who report this metric each month – and compare month on month plus year on year insights – this is pretty noteworthy. Facebook page administrators are likely to start seeing a decline in organic page impressions this month. Read about this change in detail on adweek.com
Facebook announced,
“As part of our continued effort to make it easier for businesses to make comparisons across paid and organic channels, we’ve made an update to the way we filter repeat organic impressions to be more aligned with the methodology we use for ads. This is not a change in distribution, but a change in the way we filter out repeat organic impressions that occur within a short amount of time. Other engagement metrics will remain the same.”
Facebook have already begun to roll out the changes so if you see a decline in your reach then this could be the explanation.
The text read,
“Specifically, we will be updating the time frame for which we filter out repeat organic impressions from a same person. As a result, you may see less organic impressions for your page and posts.”
And once again in true Facebook style they said,
“We are unable to provide any estimates for how this update may affect your page, if at all. Fluctuations in impressions for Facebook pages and posts continue to be normal, as impression counts can be influenced by many factors over time.”
