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Explore our Social Media Marketing Toolkit

Facebook reveals changes to its newsfeed ranking

Author's avatar By Dave Chaffey 10 Aug, 2013
Essential Essential topic

New "Story bumping" and "Last Actor" ranking changes

Importance: [rating=3]

Recommended link: Facebook news feed announcement

It seems that for some businesses, gaining visibility in Facebook’s news feed is now almost as important or more important than gaining visibility in Google’s search results for your target pages. Like Google, it’s a challenge, in their briefing this week Facebook revealed how much of a challlenge it is…

Every time someone visits News Feed there are on average 1,500 potential stories from friends, people they follow and Pages for them to see, and most people don’t have enough time to see them all…

we prioritize an average of 300 stories out of these 1,500 stories to show each day.”.

If you’re concerned with encouraging more sharing of your content through Facebook you will know how it’s controlled by the EdgeRank based on the affinity, weight and decay of posts. Marie Page has given some great guidance on how to improve visibility through understanding EdgeRank.

This week, we’re alerting you to a briefing by Facebook on some changes to the algorithm that will change your visibility. They explain that the ranking depends on:

  1. How often you interact with the friend, Page, or public figure (like an actor or journalist) who posted
  2. The number of likes, shares and comments a post receives from the world at large and from your friends in particular
  3. How much you have interacted with this type of post in the past
  4. Whether or not you and other people across Facebook are hiding or reporting a given post

The update gives more visibility of stories that people did not scroll down far enough to see to reappear near the top of News Feed if the stories are still getting lots of likes and comments (known as “story bumping”)….

Facebook-story-bumping

Facebook explains the logic behind this “Story Bumping” change:

Previously, people read 57% of the stories in their News Feeds, on average. They did not scroll far enough to see the other 43%. When the unread stories were resurfaced, the fraction of stories read increased to 70%”.

According to tests before the rollout of the change, this results in a 5% increase in the number of likes, comments and shares on the organic stories people saw from friends and an 8% increase in likes, comments and shares on the organic stories they saw from Business Pages.

Another change is “Last Actor” which has a lower impact - this gives a boost to posts which are in the last 50 interactions a user has made such as liking a post or adding to a timeline. It would seem this will favour posts from friends and family since more regular interactions are likely with these rather than brands, unless you have “super fans” who like everything you post!

Author's avatar

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.

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