New Pages Experience = Organic Reach Crash

[porioo]

Hello, we are a media company that creates articles and that drives traffic mostly from big facebook pages.

We still had classic pages. We never upgraded to the new page experience.

3 days ago, Facebook automatically upgraded all of our pages to the New Page Experience.

Since then, our organic reach collapsed.

For an exemple, on most of our pages, when we posted a viral article, it got around 30000 link clicks.

Now, the same viral article will get 1000 link clicks.

Before an article would reach around 200000 people, now: 15000 people.

All this because of the New Page Experience. As anyone experience something like this?

Thank you

[not2easy]

3 days ago, Facebook automatically upgraded all of our pages to the New Page Experience.

You might want to spend some time optimizing your "new" page experience for the changes that have been made. I would expect that if you did not update things prior to their change that it could cause the migration to the New Page Experience to not be ready to hit the ground running.

In addition since it was not prepared for their change, then 3 days is not enough time to evaluate the reach. Before you can compare the old and new reach you may need to go in and make any required changes to work smoothly with the change.

Did they not notify you that this New Page Experience was coming out and explain what you should do to prepare?

[porioo]

Hello,

4 months ago, we manually updated to the New Page Experience. We noticed, after 1 day, than our reach crashed because of this. So we switched back to classic pages. Our reach became normal.

But 3 days ago, Facebook automatically switched to the new page experience and we can't go back anymore.

We did not change anything since we always use Meta Business Suite to publish our posts. We have no page violation and all our pages are healthy and recommendable.

[not2easy]

Whenever things change there can be delays before they are running as they had been. I was more concerned if there were any related changes that you were supposed to do when it first was going to that New Page Experience. Did FB send you any information about the change?

[not2easy]

Several others have been reporting this kind of drop in organic reach recently, maybe something in that discussion can give some ideas: [webmasterworld.com...]

None of the people in that discussion mention a migration to their New Page Experience

[lacika012345]

This is the Facebook answer for the organic reach problem, I emailed with them since april:

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.

[porioo]

Interesting... did you experience an organic reach drop since you updated to New Page Experience?

[copperpaw]

any changes? how is this days? My reach dropped after may 20th and no improvements ...

[porioo]

Still no changes. did you have this because of New Page Experience update?

[copperpaw]

Page was updated to New Experience one month ago, but I think, with this update was introduced Page Recommendation and a new type of limitation.

my page quality is yellow with "Page has some issues" info but also "Good news: no violations to show."

but in Page Recommendation is "Not recommendable"

We're no longer suggesting your Page to people. People can still find and like your Page but we don't recommend Pages that include any of these: Learn how recommendations works

Admins with a history of violating Community Standards
Topic of Page is focused on civics, vaccines, or other sensitive subjects
Pages with a history of violating Community Standards
Content is clickbait, spam, or just stuff people don't want to interact with
Advertising policy violations
"

did you checked your page quality and recommendation?

[porioo]

Wow! Our pages are all green (Recommendable and no Violations).

It really happened because of the New Page Experience update.

What is the reason for your page not being recommendable? Can you fix it by removing some posts or some admins?

[copperpaw]

I removed all old post, created new videos, I contacted support and they said is page is ok, no violations found on theirs panel, they see everything green and recommendable ... maybe is a bug

[porioo]

How can you contact support?

I am trying since last week but no success…

[copperpaw]

Go to [facebook.com...] logged with your personal account, and in footer you will see
”Additional Support
Need more help with advertising?
Contact advertising support”

Maybe this depends by your country... but support from facebook is unless, that people have no idea about facebook features...

[oscarsq]

Hello. I wanted to give my point of view. The exact same thing happened to us. Moreover, not only our pages, but also our competitors (I know about 5 different blogs/portals that have been affected by this).

Ever since Facebook forced the New Page Experience on us (there was no option to opt out), blog links are no longer suggested, and the reach of posts has dropped by 90 percent or more. We adapt as much as we can, but the drop in traffic is, of course, dramatic. And it started literally from the first post in the new New Page experience. We can only hope that this is really a technical bug tha will be solved.

[Benjamin dray]

Good morning, I am French and I work for media in France. I am the administrator of two large Facebook pages (1 million and 700k). Since January 25, my pages have moved to a new version and I can confirm that I had a drastic drop of 90% in organic reach. I'm sure it's because of that. I know people who do url redirection with a new domain name and the reach starts up again, I can't explain why the xette technique works. I don't use it personally because I think it's forbidden by facebook like the likejacking at the time that some people did.

[phranque]

i would like to extend a sincere welcome to our new members in this thread - Benjamin dray, oscarsq, and copperpaw.
welcome to WebmasterWorld! [webmasterworld.com]

[porioo]

@Benjamin: we tried the link redirection but it does not work. We have had that problem in 2017 and the link redirect worked but not this time.

It is because the new page experience since it started at that very second, we see it in our stats.

Have you talked to someone at Facebook Support?

[copperpaw]

Thanks @phranque

Benjamin dray can you give us an example about what they do? A link to a post to be more clear is very helpful.

Engagement dropped a lot after algorithm changed to recommended post, I saw a low engagement from people who followed pages than rest.

After Instant Articles program was closed in April and all ads was moved to video, interest for links was dropped ... Maybe Facebook doesn't want to lost people from app, and make traffic for Google adsense ...

The question is, how we can recover our traffic back?

I already deleted all old links shared, created new videos, post reels ... Ok have no idea .
Maybe a new domain ?

[not2easy]

Sorry, we do not discuss or link to specific FB pages or accounts, it is explained in the Charter for the FB forum: [webmasterworld.com...]

We prefer to educate webmasters to make their own judgement. Sharing links to FB support related to a discussion is fine.

This is also part of our Terms Of Service [webmasterworld.com]

The Welcome Link phranque posted is a good way to learn more about our forums and functions ;)

[Benjamin dray]

@porioo and @copperpaw I have already tried to contact support several times since January 25, 2023 and they answer me the same thing each time: Facebook: Thank you for contacting Meta Support Pro. We cannot guarantee the behavior of organic users, only paid users. If you want to increase organic engagement, I recommend studying your best performing posts and trying to replicate the same type of post in the future. Here is help center content that you may find useful these are automatic responses. In France, Facebook support knows nothing about it. I saw on this forum that in the United States the support has identified the problem and that it was a technical bug? one thing is certain, we have proof that the reach organic is redistributed internationally and that the deployment of the new page version is done at the same time in all countries (within a few months). For now, my reach organic is catastrophic this month of June. I have never seen that. If anyone has new info from support or the resolution of this reach blocking, I'm interested

[copperpaw]

Facebook support is a third party company paid by facebook for advertiser support, and they have a limited access and knowledge about how facebook works. Every time when we contact facebook, we talk with someone who can see things about ads, not about page and functions.

I have no solutions for this problem, maybe they will restrict links reach because of toxic content on facebook?!

[engine]

There is zero incentive for FB to provide support for organics, and, in fact, it's something which would hurt their system. It's the same with Google, and it's why they always tell you what not to do.

In any of these circumstances, I would suggest testing, and more testing, and then test again to get the best from it, or, if your audience is there, resort to a paid program.

[Benjamin dray]

does anyone know if redirecting links on Facebook pages is allowed or prohibited? I don't want to be unpublished

[copperpaw]

you mean redirect like bitly? shortlink?

[Benjamin dray]

@copperpaw no a redirect it's a script where you take a server and a new domain name and it almost instantly redirects the user without his realizing it to the media site where you want to traffic ( link and domain name that no longer works). I know someone who does that he makes 30/40k clicks per day I am currently making 3k clicks per day. It's a shame, Facebook is sinking the pages

[copperpaw]

I heard about this method using netlify ... maybe is a chance, delete your post after traffic is low on that articles. please tell us if this works. thanks

[not2easy]

I would be sure to read through their terms before trying cloaking methods that could sink your own site.

[porioo]

@Benjamin: We tried redirecting links but it does not work this time. The problem is not with the link you post it is with the page. If the problem was with the links, the problem would've occured before the New Page Experience update.

All the big media pages in my country are suffering from this problem.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:54 pm (utc) on Jun 9, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Benjamin dray]

@porioo The problem is indeed with the links and not with the page. My page has been suggested for a few weeks with 50k likes (2.7 million people reached) on some photos. Only links are blocked. I do not understand what is happening. One of the biggest media in France has been sharing photos with the link above instead of putting the link natively for a few days. I had never seen that before.