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Publishers set to take a traffic hit as Facebook changes its news feed algorithm

FacebookFacebook appears to have struck a blow to publishers’ and brands’ reach on its platform with an announcement overnight it will prioritise posts from friends further on its news feed.

In an update overnight Facebook engineering director Lars Blackstrom warned he anticipates the update “may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages”, warning those hardest hit would be people who rely on traffic coming from direct page posts.

He wrote: “The specific impact on your Page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience. For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through Page posts.

“We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends. As always, Pages should refer to our publishing best practices.”

The changes come after the social network said it had “heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about”.

However, it will probably lead to more publishers and brands being forced to pay money to promote their content on the site, which is a major source of traffic for many.

The encouragement to make more shareable content may also lead to more clickbait-style articles appearing on the site.

The Facebook post in full:

Facebook was built on the idea of connecting people with their friends and family. As we say in our News Feed values, that is still the driving principle of News Feed today. Our top priority is keeping you connected to the people, places and things you want to be connected to — starting with the people you are friends with on Facebook. That’s why today, we’re announcing an upcoming change to News Feed ranking to help make sure you don’t miss stories from your friends.

We previously made an update that tries to ensure that stories posted directly by the friends you care about, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so you are less likely to miss them.

We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about. For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of stories for them to see each day. So we are updating News Feed over the coming weeks so that the things posted by the friends you care about are higher up in your News Feed.

Will This Impact My Page?
Overall, we anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages. The specific impact on your Page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience. For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through Page posts. We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends. As always, Pages should refer to our publishing best practices.

We are always working to improve News Feed so people see the most relevant stories to them, and will continue to make ranking updates and share them here on our News Feed FYI blog.

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