Wow, I can get a lot of Facebook likes quickly!
-
I did some testing with Facebook ads and resulting Facebook likes on target pages. And something is wrong!
Just after creating the ad, before the ad was approved, I could get many likes on the target page without even seeing any traffic on server logs or google analytics.
I documented my tests here. I repeated the tests 6 times, every time I could get tens of likes on the target page within seconds and without any approval of the ad.
These pages have little traffic and there's no way these likes could have been natural!
Everyone I reported was able to reproduce it, try yourself.
A little update. I found others reporting un-expected Likes pouring...
But at least they were "running" the ad, so externals to Facebook could have seen it and decided to Like it to later offer "liking" service as reported from this fellow.
But in my case the ad was not approved... So... Who can see it beside me and Facebook?
-
Max -
Yes, this was for a non-profit, religious organization to promote an important holiday event that was $36 in price. I can't share the conversion data, but it reached a significantly new audience in a 25 mile area around the city, with lots of conversions, a ton of impressions. Honestly I didn't even pay attention to the Facebook likes, as it didn't really matter to this campaign. I'd be happy to discuss more offline, though, if you want to message me.
Thanks!
- Jeff
-
I am very curious to know what you will find out, Jeff. Let me know when you have the results.
If I may ask, when you said your recent campaign was very successful, by which metrics? Can you share some details?
I am really hungry for FB campaign data, wish people was sharing info on FB campaigns more.
-
Yes, that is indeed strange.
I just ran a very successful campaign on Facebook recently, and it did garner more likes. Although that wasn't the intention of the ad, and I didn't do any testing during the pre-approval campaign to track likes.
I think it's people like you, who measure and track everything, that help unravel some of the mystery behind some of these new systems that are fairly opaque to the outside world. So well done...
I have an upcoming Facebook campaign that I'm poised to run soon, and will do some additional tracking and measurement on this issue.
Thanks!
- Jeff
-
So far the likes are still there.
If it was some sort of ad testing, why liking the url more than once, or twice... If it's just a test? Why 60 times?
Furthermore, with your question you are opening a door into another mystery. In the past weeks I tested likes campaigns for fan pages. And what I noticed is that once I stop the campaign not only the likes rate per day decrease, but the balance between likes and unlikes in the following days and weeks stay flat, in other words the total amount of likes stay the same. Which sounds odd for few reasons, 1) who goes back to unlike something? I actually never did, 2) how could likes and unlikes balance each other regularly, week after week?
It sounds suspicious.
Especially when you consider FB removed the possibility to list users who liked something from graph api and fql.
All people reporting FB likes fraud in the past were looking at profile of users liking their page or url and finding strange things. And FB remove that.
I keep thinking it smell badly.
-
Max - That's indeed interesting. Quick question, though... did the Facebook "Likes" stay on the sites, or did this number decrease?
I wonder if part of Facebook's automated testing procedure is to crawl the site with their internal systems, and make sure that the page mentioned in the advertisement works properly, in order to combat fraud / phishing / cross-liking?
Most of the research out there has more to do with combatting fake "Likes" that people buy from companies, and how this can affect a business:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2329878/Facebook-Ad-Fraud-How-Can-Advertisers-Combat-Paid-Likes
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook Instant Articles Not Working
I'm getting the following error on Instant Articles despite my site having substantial traffic and hundreds of articles. The provided URL is not being accepted because the site has minimal readership, which violates the Instant Article Policies (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instant-articles/policy/). Please provide a different URL. Here's the blog: http://bit.ly/2Mh1Aes
Social Media | | Neumarkets.com1 -
Facebook Share Percentage - On Blog Posts
Hi everyone, I'm trying to find a way to give each post we are creating a quality status. Since bounce rate on this case isn't really a viable option (Blog Behavior) since people could stay 10 mins reading it and then go elsewhere without interacting. I'm looking for a way to focus on facebook sharing, lets say something simple like "Facebook Shares / Sessions" per each blog post, while I can have an idea on my own data, lets say my highest is 4.1% of all people that go to that post end it up sharing it. But I wonder on average what would you consider a good engagement post, what would that percentage might be? Thanks in advance.
Social Media | | JoaoCJ0 -
How can I change the Facebook Page shown in the SERP
Hi everyone, got a quick question in regard to our Facebook page and its appearance on the Google SERP. We have individual Facebook pages for every country and language. Unfornately the UK site is ranking in the German SERP rather then our Germany Facebook Site. The UK site is way older and has much more likes which most likely explains why this page is (still) outranking our, fairly new site (couple of months). Is there a way, to push my German Facebook Site in front of the UK Site in Germany? Any advice or tipp is much appreciated. Thanks
Social Media | | ennovators0 -
How to embed on a web page a box "tell your friends on facebook what you just purchased"?
I saw this on amazon's ordering page. Is it possible to put this on any given web page? I would love to see this on my ordering page.
Social Media | | Juergen-1194810 -
How can you bulk search by email for social networks?
Hello Everyone! We're trying to launch a Social Media campaign for our website and in order to reach more people and follow/invite them to our social profiles we thought of finding them by their email addresses (i read a post somewhere - maybe seomoz, maybe not can't remember). Can anyone suggest a tool or best way of researching ~20.000 email addresses to find out / filter what social networks have this email registered? Much appreciated! Alex
Social Media | | pwpaneuro0 -
Facebook Admins
Hello, Can you give admin status to a user, that doesn't give them the ability to remove other admins. This would be editor or contributor in wordpress. The concern here is that an admin can delete the other admins. IF ATT gave admin to a disgruntled employee, they could lose a page for some time. Thanks
Social Media | | tylerfraser0 -
What can Google tell from a video?
I notice that Youtube apparently does kind of an automatic transcription. What can Google tell about a video? Is it comparing text from a voice recognition transcript? Can it take compare the waveform of a video signal and see how different a video is from another video? I'm putting together a variety of videos that are similar for different pages and wondering how much do I have to change for each video. I remember one time I attempted to launch a video that was an exact copy but with a different file name, title and tags and Youtube said, "hey, that's the same video!" Thanks!
Social Media | | 945010 -
Does it make sense to have one facebook/twitter account for multiple websites?
If you have several different websites with related themes, does it make sense to just have a facebook or twitter page for the company to make managing the account more manageable?
Social Media | | thappe0