Wow, I can get a lot of Facebook likes quickly!

[max.favilli]

I did some testing with Facebook ads and resulting Facebook likes on target pages. And something is wrong!

Just after creating the ad, before the ad was approved, I could get many likes on the target page without even seeing any traffic on server logs or google analytics.

I documented my tests here. I repeated the tests 6 times, every time I could get tens of likes on the target page within seconds and without any approval of the ad.

These pages have little traffic and there's no way these likes could have been natural!

Everyone I reported was able to reproduce it, try yourself.

A little update. I found others reporting un-expected Likes pouring...

But at least they were "running" the ad, so externals to Facebook could have seen it and decided to Like it to later offer "liking" service as reported from this fellow.

But in my case the ad was not approved... So... Who can see it beside me and Facebook?

[customerparadigm.com]

Max - That's indeed interesting.  Quick question, though... did the Facebook "Likes" stay on the sites, or did this number decrease?

I wonder if part of Facebook's automated testing procedure is to crawl the site with their internal systems, and make sure that the page mentioned in the advertisement works properly, in order to combat fraud / phishing / cross-liking?

Most of the research out there has more to do with combatting fake "Likes" that people buy from companies, and how this can affect a business:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2329878/Facebook-Ad-Fraud-How-Can-Advertisers-Combat-Paid-Likes

[max.favilli]

So far the likes are still there.

If it was some sort of ad testing, why liking the url more than once, or twice... If it's just a test? Why 60 times?

Furthermore, with your question you are opening a door into another mystery. In the past weeks I tested likes campaigns for fan pages. And what I noticed is that once I stop the campaign not only the likes rate per day decrease, but the balance between likes and unlikes in the following days and weeks stay flat, in other words the total amount of likes stay the same. Which sounds odd for few reasons, 1) who goes back to unlike something? I actually never did, 2) how could likes and unlikes balance each other regularly, week after week?

It sounds suspicious.

Especially when you consider FB removed the possibility to list users who liked something from graph api and fql.

All people reporting FB likes fraud in the past were looking at profile of users liking their page or url and finding strange things. And FB remove that.

I keep thinking it smell badly.

[customerparadigm.com]

Yes, that is indeed strange.

I just ran a very successful campaign on Facebook recently, and it did garner more likes.  Although that wasn't the intention of the ad, and I didn't do any testing during the pre-approval campaign to track likes.

I think it's people like you, who measure and track everything, that help unravel some of the mystery behind some of these new systems that are fairly opaque to the outside world.  So well done...

I have an upcoming Facebook campaign that I'm poised to run soon, and will do some additional tracking and measurement on this issue.

Thanks!

• Jeff

[max.favilli]

I am very curious to know what you will find out, Jeff. Let me know when you have the results.

If I may ask, when you said your recent campaign was very successful, by which metrics? Can you share some details?

I am really hungry for FB campaign data, wish people was sharing info on FB campaigns more.

[customerparadigm.com]

Max -

Yes, this was for a non-profit, religious organization to promote an important holiday event that was $36 in price.  I can't share the conversion data, but it reached a significantly new audience in a 25 mile area around the city, with lots of conversions, a ton of impressions.  Honestly I didn't even pay attention to the Facebook likes, as it didn't really matter to this campaign.    I'd be happy to discuss more offline, though, if you want to message me.

Thanks!

• Jeff