Business owners and companies relying on Facebook pages might have to find another tactic as the social networking giant announced on Thursday that it will be cleaning up inactive "likes."
On their official blog post, Facebook wrote that taking out the inactive "likes" will aid in the better management of campaigns from advertisers and marketers. The company added that the eliminated likes come from users that are already inactive on the social networking site.
One can gauge the popularity of a public figure, company or a brand depending on the number of "likes" their Facebook page has, according to Bidness ETC. For instance, Google's Facebook page currently has more than 19 million likes.
However, the number includes likes from users who are either deceased or who are not active on Facebook. The inactive Facebook "likes" can be misleading data for marketers and advertisers.
Pages with higher number of "likes" also appear more frequently on a user's news feed. The algorithm that Facebook uses have also been criticized recently as the news feed shows more relevant posts per user-depending on the user's searches and interaction-and hides posts from relatives and families.
The company has implemented the system to reduce the number of promotional posts that are unpaid and to increase the number of clients to pay for advertising.
Businesses who avail of their advertising scheme are provided a "buy" button on their pages, which was introduced in July 2014.
Accounts that will be deactivated or become a memorial account will have their likes removed from Facebook pages, but once it has been reactivated sometime in the future, the "like" will automatically be added back, according to PC Mag.
Facebook's move followed another spam accounts removal on its Instagram social network in December 2014.