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Anyone understand this FB like graph?

by shimony
3 replies


Mar 10 (2013) it looks like 1500 fake fans were purchased taking likes from about 300 to 1800. Then on Mar 24, 400 fans disappeared at once. Did Facebook possibly identify a ton of paid likers and remove their likes from pages?

The red unlike graph indicates a dip, but it's only 38 unlikes, not 400. Another dip 5 days later with 88 unlikes.

Then around Apr 20, there's a temporary increase of 200 likes which are removed two days later.

Totally :confused:
#graph #understand
  • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
    Facebook's data isn't always accurate and is often very slowly updated or even let's important data slip through the cracks like shares and likes from virally shared content. From my findings FB even misses UNLIKES quite regularly. So I rely on third party analytics software and good ol' manual research to find out which of this stuff is actually happening and which is from FB's wild imagination or lack thereof.

    Having said that to relate to what you've asked here I would need to know if this is your account or if you have access to the info about whether or not fake likes WERE purchased because that is unclear from your statements.

    Now if Fake Likes were purchased forget the graph (it's not often accurate as I said earlier) and look at your onpage stats ie the stats on the main page itself where your no of Likes are displayed publicly... You had 1,500 Likes so how many did you have by X date and Y date and so on.

    I work hard to keep a tab on the growth of my pages on FB and don't rely only on what the graphs show. Another way to check this rapid change in data is to go ahead and download a full report of your insights (see the image below).



    Once you have your full report in CSV, open it up in Excel and go through the data for each day, week or month you're interested in (a lot of data shows up here that you won't see on the graphs etc in insights). Be sure to select the right time frame for this research before you download the report.

    That should give you a clearer picture of when/if the UNLIKES were captured.

    As to WHY so many UNLIKES seemed to happen at a go, I'd be guessing at that without more in-depth info into this page's activities.

    Hope this helps some.

    Cheers,

    Kunle Olomofe
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  • Profile picture of the author shimony
    Thanks for your thoughtful response, Kunle.

    It's a page I'm a content creator for so have pretty much full access to the info. They did run ad campaign a bit after which also doubled their likes from about 1000 to 2000, but I've always had this suspicion that FB fakes likes on ads to fool pages that their ads are working. I'd like to see what that ad was but ads seem linked to the person, not the page.

    I feel 80% of the fans on this page are bought (farms, competitions, FB fake likes). I'm just trying to work out why the engagement on my content on this page is well down compared to others. I'll have a look at the export - I just figured Facebook's graph would be based on the data in the export. This is a year ago too so plenty of time to settle.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
      Originally Posted by shimony View Post

      Thanks for your thoughtful response, Kunle.

      It's a page I'm a content creator for so have pretty much full access to the info. They did run ad campaign a bit after which also doubled their likes from about 1000 to 2000, but I've always had this suspicion that FB fakes likes on ads to fool pages that their ads are working. I'd like to see what that ad was but ads seem linked to the person, not the page.

      I feel 80% of the fans on this page are bought (farms, competitions, FB fake likes). I'm just trying to work out why the engagement on my content on this page is well down compared to others. I'll have a look at the export - I just figured Facebook's graph would be based on the data in the export. This is a year ago too so plenty of time to settle.
      My pleasure. I get the reason for your confusion now... the page owner may have indeed run a LIKE campaign within FB to double their LIKES so quickly. In fact that is the most 'likely' scenario (unless they did some other form of marketing). But from what you've said it's most probably an FB LIKE campaign.

      Now I don't work for FB so can't say with 100% assurance that this way or that way is how their systems work internally but I have studied and tested the theory of Fake Likes from FB's LIKE campaigns and my results are that in no way does FB tamper with the LIKES or send fake LIKES... for one thing it would be suicidal to do so... I mean people will EVENTUALLY figure it out.

      Remember this is a PUBLIC company now so they can't hide as much info as they could if perhaps they were a private company. That's not to say they can't try but considering they're popularity even without the LIKE campaigns running it just makes no sense for them to fake it.

      Also the results will speak for themselves ONE day soon. Yes millions of people don't give mind to the tons of useless LIKES they have currently and over the years but SOME (Like me) do and those few are enough to unravel any shady goings on eventually so I don't believe they would be that stupid to risk cheating their advertisers.

      FB LIKE campaigns work in my experience (for myself and my clients) and these LIKES ARE REAL PEOPLE. The way the ads work is really so simple...

      FB shows your Page ad in the right column, in the news feed of your non-mobile prospects, and to the millions of mobile users that are always on FB. They show the ads regularly enough so that a huge number (based on how much you pay for ads) will see it in record time.

      From what I can tell people LIKE so quickly because the community is BUILT around this kind of FAN based mentality and PLUS the ever so savvy technique of telling someone their friend "Mr XYZ likes this too" still works like crazy even though it won't work on everyone every time, referral marketing/word of mouth marketing is still one of the fastest ways to generate GUARANTEED business I know of. FB knows this too, and that's what they use to send so many LIKES to pages so quickly.

      So, I really would be shocked to near death if they turned out to be gaming their own system, for one thing it's unnecessary because the system actually works and for another it's just not worth it to risk BILLIONS of dollars in this way... but as I say, you can never know unless you're on the inside or you thoroughly investigate FB's activities.

      Regarding the ad they showed for the page you manage, based on my research and experience with pages I manage the ads are NOT linked to personal profiles but to the actual PAGE that wants the LIKES, and the ads are usually just a combo of the following... The Page's Name, The Page's Profile Pic, The Brief About for that page, plus a "XYZ likes this" tag and a "Like Page" button. That's pretty much it. Nothing special but if you neglect to use good copy or a poor image that stuff IS likely to affect your results.

      Now regarding the page you're managing, fact is only the owners will know if those LIKES are fake or bought. So perhaps ask them for more details on how they got the LIKES? You're really working blind and may be wasting your time trying to get much engagement from a poorly built following if that's the case.

      Managing engagement is a tricky task and has a lot of factors to it. If you suspect fake likes that could be one major factor. The others could be timing of your posts, the kind of posts you're making and even the design of your page in some cases. There are several more factors and unless you actually STUDY the page over time and study your stats as you plan to do you'd only be taking a guess. Anyhow hope you can figure it.

      Best of luck,

      Kunle Olomofe
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