Facebook might be free for everyone, but it makes all its money by using your data to serve you relevant ads. Brands all over the world use the platform for advertising to the most relevant audience.
However, brands might not be too happy with Facebook after their latest blog post. The company has admitted to a discrepancy between the counts for the Like and Shares via the Graph API and the counts when you enter a URL into the search bar in the Facebook mobile app.
The Like and Share buttons on Facebook pull:
- The number of likes of a URL off Facebook
- The number of shares of a URL off Facebook (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)
- The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about a URL
But now the company has said that they have identified a difference between what these metrics count and what the mobile search query counts.
“We are working to resolve this issue so that the Like and Share button metrics and our mobile search query metrics match up, and we will notify partners as soon as we have an update,” reads the blog post.
The number of likes, shares, clicks, etc. are of incredible importance to any brands using the platform for targeting their audience. They are used to analyze the effectiveness of the company’s ads and to determine how to improve their strategy.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has been caught (or admitted) doing something like this. Back in September, a WSJ report found out that Facebook gave ad agencies inflated metrics for the average amount of time users spend watching clips on the social platform for over two years.
Source— Facebook
Image Credits — SeeVibes
