Facebook announced on Thursday that it is changing the way it will count the likes on your page to remove those that came from inactive or deactivated users.
"To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we're updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages' like counts. This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date," Facebook wrote on its news page.
Facebook decided to implement the change to help businesses get a clearer and more accurate picture of the number of audiences they have on their pages.
The changes will be noticeable in the next few weeks. The likes of those who deactivated their accounts will be automatically subtracted from the existing likes but once they reactivate their accounts, their likes will be automatically added. Sounds simple, all you need to do is to convince your likers to keep their accounts activated or make your marketing more aggressive.
Facebook is expecting a "slight dip," but it is too early to say how many likes one page will lose with this update. But the social networking giant is not expecting the issue that Instagram had during its clean-up in December that led to a reduction of followers by as much as 15 percent since the site doesn't have issues with spam accounts.
While this might sound like bad news for the Facebook admins whose performance is based on the number of likes, most users are happy with the change, according to PCMag.
"Awesome. No more inflated numbers," wrote Boostability's Jeremy Lindström.
"When it comes to Facebook likes, quality is better than quantity," according to Results Repeat. "So this is definitely a good thing!"
