Facebook Warns Page Owners ‘Like’ Count Will Drop on March 12

Facebook announced yesterday that it will be removing inactive accounts from the network which will likely result in Page owners seeing a drop in their likes. In the official Facebook blog, Facebook explained “to make audience data more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized or voluntarily inactive accounts from Pages’ like counts.”

According to Facebook, there are two main reasons it’s doing this.

Business Results: The first is that the company wants to produce useful results for businesses and, “provide up-to-date insights on people who actively follow their Page.” In order for businesses to find users they’re looking for through Facebook’s lookalike audiences, they will need the most up-to-date information only on the people who are actively on Facebook following their Pages.

Consistency: Second, Facebook also wants to make business results consistent with users’ actual activity. Facebook already removes likes and comments made by deactivated accounts on individual Page posts. The update would keep the data consistent.

The decrease is set to happen on March 12, 2015 and should continue for the next few weeks. The company will notify all Page owners that they will likely see a “dip” in their Page likes. For those who object to this, Facebook mentions, “these removed likes are people who are already inactive on Facebook.”

When users reactivate their accounts, the likes to Pages will be restored.

Page admins, what do you think of this new update from Facebook?