In November of last year, Facebook identified a bug in their Page Insights for Organic Reach, in which they were overreporting the number of people reached by a given post organically by not removing duplicate visitors. This bug only affected organic reach insights; paid posts were calculated correctly. Basically, organic posts were counted every time a user refreshed their screen and viewed the post again. Paid posts were only counted once, the first time a user viewed it.
Facebook went on to promise greater transparency and vowed to fix the bug, and bring the organic reach calculations in line with the paid reach calculations.
Well, Facebook made good on its promise, announcing an update to the reach measurement to accurately capture post views. The change, which took effect Monday, February 12, will measure organic reach the same way it measures paid reach:
On Pages, we’ve historically defined reach as a person refreshing their News Feed and the post being placed in their feed. For paid ads reports, we’ve moved to a stricter definition that only counts reach once the post enters the person’s screen (“viewable impressions”). With the stricter definition, we estimate that reported organic reach will be 20% lower on average.
So what will your insights look like now? You will notice that the reach numbers seem lower; in fact, the 7-day reach metrics will be about 33% lower, and 28-day reach will be 55% lower.
They’ve also redesigned the Page Insights for mobile, making it easier to find the most important information at a glance on mobile. They’ve also put the most commonly used metrics at the top, including:
- General Page diagnostics such as number of likes, reach and engagement
- Results of actions recently taken such as recent post performance
- Preview of new Page engagement such as demographic information on new followers
These new features are available for both iOS and Android.
So what do you think of the new changes Facebook is making?
Further reading:
An Update on Metrics and Reporting – Facebook
Improving Page Insights to help businesses understand the results that matter most – Facebook
