About a month ago, Facebook very quietly rolled out this new web developer tool. Privacy invasion? We’ll see. Marketer’s dream come true? Most definitely. So, those of you with Facebook company pages know that Facebook offers ‘insights’ into who is checking out your business page. Facebook has expanded this service to allow tracking for any FB user who checks out your website as well.
Think it’s the same as Google Analytics? Think again.
Facebook Insights offers the age, sex and location of every person that visits your site, compiling the information from the visitor’s Facebook profile.
This means that for the first time ever, website owners have detailed information about the demographics visiting their site.
It also tracks “likes” “shares” and “comments,” giving webmasters statistics about what kind of pages and blog posts are popular among different segmented visitors. So, it’s the first tracking software that shows the social media loop and how it can affect your traffic (and therefore your rankings.)
Also, random side note- “shares” matter more than “likes” in Google’s algorithm.
In case you didn’t know, Google uses link popularity on social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to determine your website’s SERP. Get a popular link to be passed around and your website will jump up in the rankings. Interestingly enough, ‘shares’ are valued more highly in Google’s algorithm than ‘likes’ – so tell your family and friends!
Want to add this insanely useful free tool to your website? Go to Facebook.com/insights and click on “Insights for your Website.” You’ll need to add the meta property code provided into the tag of a root webpage.
