In information we have collected and tested from Facebook Support, we now know that Facebook will remove fans from your page from countries you select to not show your page to. They don’t hide your content from view, they actually remove them from your page fan roster.
Why Removing Them Is Awesome
Facebook’s algorithm takes into account Engagement as a ranking factor for the “Edgerank” of your posts. A post’s Edgerank is how Facebook determines which posts will be shown to your fans. The better the Edgerank, the more likely your post will show up.
If you have a bunch of fake Facebook fans, now you have a bunch of people who never engage with your posts. This means that any engagement you do get, such as people clicking “Like” or commenting will have less effect on your Edgerank because a lower percentage of your total fans are engaging with your content.
Pro Tip: Often fake fans will be from countries such as India, Turkey or Russia. It really depends on where you business is located and who you do business with. You can see in your Page Insights how many fans you have from each country.
If you can remove this dead weight, your Edgerank will increase and your posts will get shown more often to your fans. You can also save on Boosted Post budget that is being shown to fake fans or fans in countries you don’t do business in.
If you are going top boost a post, make sure you limit the geographical area!
How To Add Country And Age Restrictions
From Facebook Support:
“In order to have more control over who is able to view and like your Page, I would recommend exploring the option we offer to gate your page to certain audiences.”
To see options to gate your Page:
1. Navigate to your Page
2. Select Settings (at top right)
3. Select Country Restrictions
4. Enter the countries you want to show your page to or that you want to exclude and hit save. (see image)
From here you can choose to show your Page only to specific countries, through the Country Restrictions field or to certain age ranges, through the Age Restrictions field.
Please note that if you make changes to your current Page settings, you could lose a portion of your existing fan base. For example, if you adjust your age restrictions to 21+, all fans who are under the age of 21 will be removed as fans of your Page.
You can also set up privacy settings for your Page posts as described here: https://www.facebook.com/help/236898969688346
If this is true, and so far it seems to be working, Facebook will not just hide your page from people in these countries (or ages) but will remove them as fans of your page.
Facebook will not immediately remove those fans, it can take a few weeks before it removed them all. I believe (not confirmed) that it removes them as those people log in. NOTE: If they are fake accounts and are not logged in again, it appears that they are not getting removed in all cases.
How do I remove someone who likes my Facebook Page?
To remove someone who likes your Page:
- Click Settings at the top of your Page.
- Click People and Other Pages in the left column.
- Click to check the box next to the person you want to remove.
- Click
and select Remove From Page Likes.
- Click Confirm.
(source: FB support)
I hope this helps!
More Content and Marketing Help
Fake Reviews Online: Much Ado About Nothing – How To Handle Fake Reviews
Check out our Medium Publication: Digital Marketing Masters
Wow, this was really helpful, THANK YOU.
I tried this and it doesn’t seem to work.
We’re a UK based prog rock tribute band, and we have 7000 followers and 40,000 likes. While I know we have a small number of fans abroad, the vast majority of overseas likes are probably fakes.
Yesterday I followed the procedure above, and blocked all African countries to see what would happen. This should have removed about 500 followers. Today there are four more followers than yesterday, and they still include the ones in the countries I blocked.
Is it different for a group page than it is for a personal one?
We’ve found it can take several weeks for the fans to drop off. We haven’t tested it for a year or so, things may have changed. I will try to test it out again soon and update the post with our results.
Several weeks? Could you be more specific like 1-3 weeks? or 4+ weeks?
Hello Trent. Unfortunately, the timeline on removing reviews seems to vary wildly at Yelp, Google, and Facebook. The fastest I’ve had one removed is about 12 hours, the longest took 3 months.
Thanks, Matt. Here’s to hoping for 12 hours instead of 3 months.
Did you ever find a way to remove fake profiles from your page?
As far as I know, there is no way to remove fakes except by identifying them and blocking them. Facebook (supposedly) cleans them out as they find them.
You are awesome! very helpful, thank you so much…
if I understand correctly, this is all about a business page, not personsal facebook profile. What if you put country restrictions on your PAGE, but you have friends in that country on your PROFILE, what happens to them, do they see your posts? Will they remain friends or be blocked?
Page restrictions and security are separate from your personal account security and block lists, etc. One should not affect the access of the other.
However, if you share something to your personal feed from the business, those security restrictions may follow the post. We have not tested this.
Thank you for sharing this tidbit! I can’t wait to try it out and see if I can do it with DYL.
I was really hoping your tips for removing fake fans by using the country restrictions would work, but I’ve now been waiting about 6 months for it to take effect, with no luck! Maybe they changed things. Also, when I try to manually remove individuals, using the “remove from page likes” under “People and Other Pages,” I’ve been getting the following FB error for the past several months as well (Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.) Any ideas?? This is frustrating! Thanks.
I tested using “Remove from Page Likes” and it worked for me. Perhaps they are removed by still displaying in your list? That would make the error show up. You could also try just banning them. Doesn’t matter if you ban them if you don’t want them on your page anyway. 🙂