Why did my organic reach drop by 95 percent?

organic reach

[lacika012345]

Hello,

My Facebook pages have had absolutely zero organic reach for external links for weeks. Even if I share any external link to 4-500 thousand people, only 1-2 people click on it and that's it. I also tried to advertise, but no one clicked on that either, while thousands of people clicked on my shares before that.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?

[gregl512]

I just found this website and forum via a Google search, so figured I'd chime in to basically say the same thing's been happening to me as well. It hasn't been a recent issue for me, however. It started back in mid-late January of this year. I run a small business page on Facebook (only about 1,800 followers), and for a large part of last year I could pretty much predict what my minimum organic reach would be for anything I posted. It didn't really matter on the day or time or frequency of my posts, as the minimum reach was generally around the same range. Then sometime in mid-late January everything pretty much changed overnight. Within 1 week my organic reach was cut in half (and often more) and has been that way ever since.

At first I thought it was just me, as I've been fairly vocal with their completely inept outsourced support and advertising department in the past. (I used to run ads with them, and whenever I encountered technical errors or bugs, their support department was totally useless.) Then a few months ago I happened to see a post another small business had written complaining about suddenly reduced reach, and others responded to that post saying the same thing. It became apparent Facebook was doing this on purpose when in the past few months they kept asking me to "boost" every post I make. I have tried posting on different days, different times to see if that made a difference, but the difference is negligible. I've also tried scheduling posts and just posting immediately with no luck. I have seen other pages in my industry with about as many followers as me (or a few thousand more) have similar issues (just by observing the dramatic drop in the likes of their posts in recent months), while others don't seem to be affected as much. I contacted Facebook's advertising support about it (even though it's not really an advertising issue) a few months ago, and got back a version of the same pointless email someone on here already posted. It's really quite ridiculous that Facebook has such horrible support; if it wasn't for their advertising support department, I don't know how the average small business (or person) would get any support from them at all.

One last thing: Around the time this all started I noticed Facebook was screwing crap up as the "Meta Business Suite" started losing features and things were being moved around. You used to be able to see a bar chart of when your followers were online. They removed that rather handy feature when they started playing around with reach. I was told by one of their support people that they "may bring it back". But that was months ago. Now whenever I try to schedule a Facebook post, it always recommends scheduling it for 6 PM any day of the week (and it's been saying that for months now). It's clear that that's a random time they're coming up with, unlike before when it used to tell you when your followers were most likely to be online based on past behavior.

[lacika012345]

2 days ago facebook just gave me again the same information:

"Recently, there are many advertisers who are facing this issue. This is a temporary error from the system. However, do not need to worry as our technicians are working very hard to fix this issue. The issue will be resolved and you should see your delivery go back to normal soon. Thank you so much for your kind understanding."

I understand that they are at fault, but this has been going on for almost 2 months. I have never experienced anything like this. Now organic reach is worse than ever...

[clow]

I had the same problem about 2 years ago and it lasted approximately 1 year before it was fixed. At that time, the organic reach also dropped by 95%. Then everything was fine for two years and now, for about 2 months, the organic reach has dropped by 50%.

[Ahmad_Qaisi]

Same thing happened with me ....
first week of May then now back to 5-10 online users

[not2easy]

I noticed that FB/Meta has just started rolling out paid Verification: [webmasterworld.com...]

I have no idea whether that is something that can affect reach, I don't think it is even offered everywhere at this time.

[lacika012345]

Since this is an admitted Facebook bug, I don't think it has anything to do with organic reach. It's just interesting, the bug has been going on for 2 months now and nothing happens...

[edited by: not2easy at 9:02 pm (utc) on May 17, 2023]
[edit reason] spliced to stay on topic [/edit]

[not2easy]

I apologize for any confusion, but I moved your post back to this discussion where it fits in.

I did not think that Verification was related, especially since it is just starting. I thought if anyone might know it would be people with something not working as expected.

[Xyborg]

I just found this thread looking for some information about this same drop. We have a 2mi FB page which suddenly starting experiencing a reach drop after May 1st. Now, we are at 30% the traffic we used to had during the previous weeks.

Same thing as you've mentioned here, drop in reach, drop in clicks, and obviously drop in ad rev.

This is something that we had experienced during the past years, it always go back up again, but now I don't know honestly.

[lacika012345]

I think your problem is not the same as what happens to many of us here. We have had a 95-98% drop in organic reach for posts for almost 2 months, since March 1.

[Xyborg]

Could be because of my market? Tattoo plus mostly LATAM traffic (mainly MX). I've seen in the past some delay on changes they started to apply on the US/CA first, and weeks later they start the rollout in other markets.

[nordland]

Hello. I have a pretty big site and I see decline, but I don't prioritize Facebook that much, realized a few years ago that you have to differentiate the traffic to the website. One thing I've noticed recently with Facebook in general is how dead it is, no friends hardly respond there anymore, they're not online anymore, now you can reach them on Tiktok and Snapchat. Another thing I noticed is that you get requests very often if you like this and more, I think the new laws have caused it for Facebook which makes users turn their backs, simply too much nonsense on the page.

It's just plain boring on Facebook, I understand why they struggle to capture the younger users, they have a lot more fun on other platforms. The heyday of Facebook was about 5 - 7 years ago, since then it has gone downhill. More users today? possible, but they are probably from the third world.

[Ahmad_Qaisi]

But many pages on facebook are still working finem and those who suffered from reach drop, have recovered.
I had a recovery for around one week, then reach dropped again.

But this time, it is not 2-10 online on analytics, I am getting now 10-25

[copperpaw]

Hello, same happened to me on May 20th, traffic dropped from 300 to 30... and this happening once a month or 2 months...
Usually i stop posting for few days and this may help in some cases.
I think, the system identify wrong things on website and limit reach for safety, and after they reanalyzing the content or fix the system, site reach come back.
But we can't know because everything is hidden, no notification about this, support is unless (only standard messages, i don't know why they are paid for)
If you have any idea how to fix it faster, please share. Thanks

[not2easy]

Have any of you folks with the sudden heavy drop in organic reach been switched to FaceBook's New Page Experience?

I ask because we have a newer discussion where that appears to have caused the drop: [webmasterworld.com...]

[lacika012345]

I had New page experience with good organic reach, so not because of this.

And this is the Facebook answer for this problem:

Recently, there are many advertisers who are facing this issue. This is a temporary error from the system. However, do not need to worry as our technicians are working very hard to fix this issue. The issue will be resolved and you should see your delivery go back to normal soon. Thank you so much for your kind understanding.

[Benjamin dray]

Good morning, I discussed on the other newsgroup for the organic scope blocking issues following the upgrade to the new version. Has anyone contacted support recently with new information? I sent many requests from my side in France without success. The month of June is catastrophic, never seen, The blocking of links only is incredible (10 people online)

[lacika012345]

Hello, Has anyone experienced any changes? I had almost back to the original organic access for 4-5 days, but yesterday the organic reach on all pages dropped to zero again...
And the online counter has also gone stupid. (whos.amung.us) When I had 600 people online on my website a few days ago, the online counter showed as if every article was viewed by one person. I am sure they are doing something at facebook

[Benjamin dray]

@lacika I had the same thing last month and after reblocked. it's just impossible what is happening it must be a technical error it has to be. Some say support knows

[lacika012345]

Is there any change for anybody? For me again absolute zero organic reach since last week...

[jc2021]

Same issue here, no change at all.

[Benjamin dray]

Hi,

Me too in france the reach is down
.

[porioo]

Yup, no change at all. Reach definitely crashed for good.

[lacika012345]

I would like to tell you about my experience. I tried one thing. I changed the name of my Facebook page and the link to my Facebook page, and suddenly I had hundreds of online visitors on my website. This lasted for about 10 minutes and then back to zero again. I tried the facebook pages used by my other website and the same thing happened there. So there are some very interesting things happening here, I think Facebook is deliberately suppressing some people's organic reach.

[engine]

>suppressing some people's organic reach.
Or boosting new organic reach.

[gregl512]

"I think Facebook is deliberately suppressing some people's organic reach"

Definitely. That's why ever since this started I'm always being prompted to "boost" every post I make. Last year it would be an occasional suggestion. Now it's built into the programming to come up after posting anything. This "Meta" mess they created has them losing money and members, so they're looking for any way to make money. I know it's affecting many pages set up as businesses (i.e. those with followers). I'm wondering if it's also affecting personal pages --- I know some people actually run their business from just their personal page.

Over the past few weeks I've also seen a decline in likes and comments in many people's posts among groups I'm a part of. The only people continuing to get a lot of interaction in these groups with their posts are those people who Facebook has determined post popular things.

[Benjamin dray]

I contacted Meta verified support again and ad support on the phone, they know absolutely nothing. It could be (this is only a hypothesis), that Facebook is testing and has updated its algorithm like Instagram. I have an Instagram account that was doing very well. now he is completely dead

[Ahmad_Qaisi]

Since yesterday 8th of September I have seen an increase in the reach ( number of likes ) more engagement on my posts.
I have don nothing.

my online analytics went from 5-20 to 35-55

and another page for one of my friends also noticed an improvement in the reach.

hope things will continue to rise up.

[lacika012345]

Me too since yesterday, maybe they did something.

[Benjamin dray]

Nothing for me in France... bad reach since january 2023

[Ahmad_Qaisi]

My online analytics today increased to be 35-90-100
hope this will last for long time and not to be temporary improvement