Facebook News Feed Update: No More Fishing For Clicks.

Facebook just updated their News Feed. According to Facebook, this update will help people find posts and links from publishers that are more interesting and relevant. And Facebook will weed out posts that are spammy and reported. With this update, there are two notable changes:

1) Facebook is becoming stricter on click-baiting headlines

These are the posts where the publisher posts a link with a title that encourages people to click to see more, without telling anything about what awaits them. Previously, posts like this would get many clicks, and therefore a greater reach. Now, Facebook can determine if the content behind the link is genuine by measuring how long you remain outside Facebook before coming back. If you click on a link and go straight back, Facebook will lower the rank of the post that took you out.

2) Facebook will prioritize link posts over regular posts with links

The second update relates to links shared in posts. When people share a photo on Facebook today, it’s shown by a large picture, a headline and a description:

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People – and we see this in all our stats – prefer to click on links that are displayed in the link post format – where the link is visible as text alongside the text you type as you post the link. The link format also shows the beginning of an article, which makes it easier for people to decide whether this is a story they want to read or not. For advertisers this should be the preferred format for sharing links and driving clicks anyway, but this change is important to note especially with organic reach in mind.

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Will this affect you?

The pages that are frequently click-baiting and have content that people quickly escape from, will experience a drop in reach during the coming months. You should already be posting clickable stories as link posts as they’ve always converted clicks better, but now Facebook will also give link posts organic priority.

What does this mean to the every-day Facebook’er?

Even more relevant content will be delivered to you, and the good guys at Facebook are making sure to get rid of spammy-sites that overcrowd your News Feed, so you can sit back and enjoy the things you care about.

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Here’s tips for further reading if you want to learn more about driving traffic to your links:

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