You’ve likely seen this…When a new fan “Likes” your Page, they get a series of suggested pages they may also wish to “Like.”
What you Need to Know
These recommendations are not paid ads.
Facebook simply offers this and bases suggestions on location, category, and other pages “Liked” by fans of your page.
Fans can hover over a suggested page’s thumbnail to “Like” it right away, or click on it to go check out the page. Or, they can click “See All” to be taken to the full “Like Your Favorite Pages” browser.
It’s helpful that the suggested pages are supposed to be based on fans’ interests, but it can be a distraction from a new fan spending more time on your page, which they just “Liked.” Suggested pages are a quick temptation to leave and go on to a new Facebook page.
At their worst, they can recommend competing fan pages to your new fans. See this Sears example:
Shows Page suggestions of brands that compete with Sears
Ability to Turn Off is Available
Participation in Page Suggestions is voluntary. It can be turned off. However, be aware that if you opt out of having suggestions shown to your new fans, then your page won’t be suggested to new fans of other pages. It’s a trade-off you need to evaluate.
To turn off similar Page suggestions:
- From the top of your Page, click Edit Page
- Select Edit Settings
- Click Similar Page Suggestions
- Uncheck the box next to Similar Page Suggestions
- Click Save Changes
This is great info, but the businesses need to know that by disabling this, it also removes them from being a suggested page on other pages as well.
Another question is what criteria is being used to suggest similar pages and depending on your product or service should this be a concern?
Yes, @deirdrebaker:disqus, that is correct and what I outline in the paragraph titled, “Ability to Turn off is Available.” Thanks for stopping in!
Yes, that the point of why a Page may want to consider turning it off. From what we can find, the suggestions are based on location, category, and other pages “Liked”. So it is a algorithm and in the Sears example I would think they may want to be concerned about having suggestions like “Ebay” and others places where users could shop other than Sears mentioned right away there.
I’m still looking for the Edit Page on my page.
me either!!!
The Edit Page button on any Facebook Page (fan page, not profile) is at the top right of the page. See image.
So MIke, as of 10/2013 version there is no Edit Page on a personal site (or it’s hidden – typical FB). Is there a way to turn these suggestions off in the newer format?
Hey there @jcwjcw:disqus. I’m not sure I follow your info. This is about “Facebook Pages” and not personal profile so not sure when you say “personal site” what you mean. If you mean a Facebook Page, I still have it in mine but if you don’t, in your Page Admin area there has to be a way to get to “Edit Settings” which is the location where this is managed. It would be near “Admin Roles”. See pic.
it’s a farse…it does not exist
Mike, why the heck would an ordinary person have a fan page? Most people like me want to turn off whatever it is that causes the TOTALLY annoying “similar to” crap to appear when we click “like” on something a friend posts. Come down to earth, remember when you were just a regular schmuck using Facebook, and tell us if there is away to turn this OFF.
Hi. Facebook users cannot turn them off, that’s at Facebook’s discretion. This posts talks about how Pages have the option to turn off their Page being involved in it.