Facebook Reports And Fixes Bugs, Increases Metrics Options
by Laurie Sullivan, Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 16, 2016
Facebook Wednesday said it has fixed a bug in Page Insights that caused a miscalculation in numbers, and promised to become more forthcoming and open about metrics. As with Google, as more marketers supplement search advertising with social, Facebook vows to increase third-party verification options, build in more metrics, and create a blog where users of its ad services can find detailed information about specific updates and fixes.
Another bug in Page Insights, which has since been fixed, was uncovered in late October that prevented the social site from reporting on organic engagement counts, reactions, shares and comments.
In the most recent fix, most of the data went unaffected — including graphs, daily and historical reach, per-post reach, exported and API reach data, and all the data on the Reach tab — but one summary number showing 7-day or 28-day organic page reach was miscalculated as a simple sum of daily reach instead of de-duplicating repeat visitors during those periods, the social network explains in a post.
“The de-duplicated 7-day summary in the overview dashboard will be 33% lower on average and 28-day will be 55% lower; data in other fields is unaffected,” per Facebook. “This bug has been live since May; we will be fixing this in the next few weeks. It does not affect paid reach.”
One “miscalculation” was discovered in September first reported by The Wall Street Journal, but it’s not clear whether the recent bug fix is related.
Along with the news, Facebook announced a new internal review process to ensure that metrics are clear and up to date as products are updated and changed. The company said it will communicate more often about updates and plans to create a metrics blog, similar to News Feed FYI, to update advertisers on changes.
The first post details the improvements made to Page organic reach to match what Facebook did for paid reach. For starters, reach counts now are based on viewable impressions.
The post also details the metrics glitch around video views and how Facebook will attempt to fix it.
Facebook explains that the issue comes into play when someone watches a video to completion on their device and the audio continues to play for a bit longer. This caused Facebook to measure the metric in a way that undercounted the “video watches at 100%.” Facebook said the fix may result in “roughly a 35% increase in the count of ‘video watches at 100%.'”
The post also provides details about analytics in Apps for referrals, interest lists and follower counts, and how Facebook will clarify metrics in the future.
MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily
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