Back in November of 2016, Facebook said that they were going to make changes to their systems so that their organic reach metric would only track impressions that were seen on someone’s screen. After more than a year, Facebook has finally announced that they are actively working on this change. Until the adjustment actually goes live, those with Facebook Pages will be getting inaccurate stats since just having their page load would count, even if it were never seen on a user’s screen.
According to the announcement, the new methodology will be in place ‘in early 2018.’ Why there is this continued delay is unclear. Tracking only viewable stats has been something marketers have been demanding for years now. Facebook already uses this type of tracking for many other things, including ad displays, so it is disappointing that tracking organic traffic is so far behind.
Facebook has long been known to fail to put those who don’t buy ad space on their list of priorities, and this is just one more example.
Once this change finally does go through, page owners should expect to see an approximate 20% drop in the traffic stats. This is not an actual drop in traffic, but just a correction to remove the non-viewable visitors.
