Facebook is deleting “likes”

1. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   Facebook is deleting “likes” all over the place. Goodbye to all those lovely organic links…
   
   Doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it either. Unless the default for all "likes" is now gradually being set to private and friends-only. Which means Google is never going to see them.  That is not good news...
   
   Check your hubs.

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      cpvrposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That's a rumor, its not happening.

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         DjBryleposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         It happened to all my hubs...

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2. 71

   livewithrichardposted 13 years ago

   Where did you hear that?  I did a search, news search, facebook search, and couldn't find anything to substantiate this claim.

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      paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Same here. No confirmation anywhere.
      
      Except, if you start checking hubs with known likes, many of them are no more.
      
      As to why this is so, I'm just speculating like everyone else.
      
      Check your hubs.

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         Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Untrue. Recently someone else posted in the forum that when they went to edit their hubs, some which had lots of likes on FB, after the editing was done, then the "likes" were also gone.
         
         It could be just a glitch in Hubpages. However, I still have my likes on all the hubs that have them.

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      2. 69

         DjBryleposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         One of my hubs had 130 "likes" and now, they are all gone

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3. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   The main reward for quality is getting lots of likes aka links for google to count. That is how google knows it’s a good hub. And thus how success comes about. If quality is no longer able to be recognized by google, then this “game” has just become too damn hard…
   
   Let’s hope to hell all those earned links are still publicly out there, and the disappearing counts on our hubs are for a completely different reason.

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   1. 71

      livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've just made a cursory check of my hubs known to have likes and they are all still there. Also, I have dozens of hubs that have no likes at all and they are still showing on the first page or near the first page of google for the keywords I'm targeting. So the likes are no where near what it takes to be found by Google.
      
      I think you are placing too much emphasis on the importance of likes for your hubs. They certainly can be a benefit but no more or less than other social bookmarks.
      
      Social bookmarking is only as good as your network. This means you have to have a large network.

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      kephriraposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I thought facebook links were all nofollow anyway, so they would have a small or non-existent effect on search engine rankings. Was I wrong about that?

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         paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         All I know is that my multiple-liked hubs got traffic and my other hubs did not. So maybe the links are no-follow, but they most certainly were counted, added up, and given brownie points accordingly.

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            WryLiltposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            You're assuming that the likes bought you traffic.
            
            Maybe you've got the cart before the horse.
            
            Maybe you're getting likes BECAUSE of the traffic.

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      2. 71

         livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         The links on facebook are nofollow unless they are on a fanpage or group page.  The like and tweet buttons at the top of all our hubs count as votes in favor like diggs and SU's, and from here they are only as valuable as the size of the social network that views it. 
         
         When a person clicks on like or tweet it gets posted on that persons wall or account, if that person has hundreds or thousands of followers then potentially hundreds or thousands of other people will see it, trust the person that liked or tweeted it and then follow to like or tweet as well.  If the person has only a few followers in his/her network then there is not much of a benefit.
         
         Likes and tweets can improve the traffic to your content and the traffic will improve the ranking of your content.

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      thisisoliposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      The only part of facebook that Google uses is Fan Pages, Bing uses public data on profiles only.
      
      *edit* noticed a few different viewpoints on this.
      
      In a recent interview with both Google and Bing the two search engine giants discussed social media. WHiel they do not bother with most social media, they both use (Microsoft will be using it a lot more in the future, most of their SM ranking algorithm changes are in the works) Twitter and Facebook to help judge what people are finding interesting. They both use these social media tools in slightly different ways, but they are now both using twitter and facebook as part of the rankign algorithm.

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4. 59

   Ellarose92posted 13 years ago

   oh wow, i hope this isnt the case

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5. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   Alas, I do not. And there was no editing involved. Plus, I recollect HP responded in that other thread that it wasn't HP's doing.
   
   I'm going and checking more hubs. And not just mine.

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6. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   Some of mine are gone. Some are not. No editing involved. Weird.
   
   I’m done with this for the day.
   
   If others are missing likes, hopefully they will report it here.
   
   Better yet, no one reports anything missing. And both me and the other person’s likes will have reappeared by tomorrow.

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7. 85

   rebekahELLEposted 13 years ago

   does anyone have official word about this? I noticed sunforged mentioned it yesterday on the hubfeed that FB is deleting likes. I looked on some of my hubs this morning, and the likes are gone or fewer.

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   skyfireposted 13 years ago

   I guess blackhat folks created some sort of bot to produce likes to their articles which got noticed by FB spam team.

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9. 71

   livewithrichardposted 13 years ago

   http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.med … book.spam/
   
   I just found this and it looks as if the cuts are aimed at reducing spam likes.

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10. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

    
    
    Well, even more of my likes have disappeared.
    
    If this turns out to be some sort of weird glitch, then consider the above image as humor.
    
    If, however, this turns out to be tied in with all the other recent FB news, then this is definitely not humor.
    
    If anyone can shed some light on this it would be much appreciated.
    
    I can also absolutely and categorically state that none of my likes are/were spam likes. If that is indeed what FB is doing here, then they are screwing up big time and hurting innocent people.

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11. 85

    rebekahELLEposted 13 years ago

    they can help in directing the right traffic to hubs. I recently had a quite prominent contact that ended up liking one of my hubs. It's those people that can make that 'like' feature beneficial.

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       livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Exactly, its the quality and size of the network of the person that "likes" your content or "tweets" your content. It's the same for all social networks.  The larger your network the further your reach but quality matters because if you are just a random follower or have random followers the quality of those likes and tweets will show no or little benefit.

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12. 85

    rebekahELLEposted 13 years ago

    now I just checked that hub and all the likes are gone...
    I don't understand. they were not spam likes.

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13. 67

    Anamika Sposted 13 years ago

    That happened to me too!  I had  2 high traffic hubs one which had over 630 likes and another 162 likes the last time i checked it and now i have only 2 likes. I was hoping that some miracle would happen and i would see the same numbers again... But...

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14. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

    .
    The next thing to wonder about is if the hubs with the deleted likes are now permanently blacklisted. If no new likes show up in a reasonable amount of time, then the answer is a very probable yes.

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       livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       well lets test that theory. Give me a hub you know had likes, Ill go like it and see if it appears.

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          paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          .
          http://hubpages.com/hub/SUNSPOTS-SOLAR- … le-maximum

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             livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

             Okay, go check.
             
             Edit:  I see the like show on your page but it did not show up on my wall on FB.

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             1. 60

                paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                Thanks! The lonely one like is there. We will see how long it stays.
                
                The no-show on the FB page does not bode well...

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15. 85

    rebekahELLEposted 13 years ago

    hmm, I just checked all of the 10 hot hubs in the Hubs category and hardly any of them are showing likes...
    
    I'm going outside, enough techie talk for me. my FB plug in recommendation is only showing hubs shared and the # of shares, no likes from anyone on anybody's hubs.

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       paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       .
       I kind of consider your post good news. It would tend to indicate that this is a major technical foul-up, rather than a deliberate act by FB.
       
       Maybe this isn’t an FML moment after all.

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16. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

    .
    I am 99% certain that these 2 news stories tie in to our missing likes somehow.
    
    http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/ … likes-ads/
    
    http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 … w-paid-ads

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17. 87

    IzzyMposted 13 years ago

    Well...I never got any Facebook 'likes' to notice any difference.
    Used to feel left out (no friends) but now I don't feel so bad.

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18. 66

    darksideposted 13 years ago

    There's very little chance that Google is going to index Likes anyway. Even if your profile is public that doesn't mean the outside world can see it unless they're logged into Facebook.

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19. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

    .
    Between the earlier articles posted about spam-likes and these new articles, plus some other research; I have now concluded that those missing likes (and their associated, google counted-up links) are never coming back. And that is that.
    
    It will be interesting to see how long it takes google to discover my radically reduced link count.
    
    Looks like my new profile pic is here to stay; leastwise until some counterbalancing good thing happens (fat chance).
    
    Time for me to find a new “career path”.

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20. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

    The Likes are coming back.
    
    There, I'm done on this third (?) thread.

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    thisisoliposted 13 years ago

    For reference look on Danny Sullivan's blog or
    
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing- … luence-seo

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       rebekahELLEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       how does this affect how likes are not showing in the FB plug-in here at HP. The box used to be full of hubbers who shared or liked a hub. now all I see is http://www.facebook.com/plugins/activit … ions=false

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          bgamallposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          I saw  that too. Probably should get it off hubs. How can that police hubs have so many likes in such a short time and the others don't exist?

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             rebekahELLEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

             I have no idea. No one really seems to have an official answer.. but none of them are 'likes'. they are all hubs shared or # of people who shared the hub.

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          thisisoliposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          It was confirming htat while facebook likes do not affect SEO so much, they do have a use in SEO.

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22. 68

    bgamallposted 13 years ago

    What are you people talking about? I have no clue what you are discussing in this thread.

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23. 77

    Sally's Troveposted 13 years ago

    I was amazed to find that this Hub, "The Police Wife Life, An Urgent Cry For The Support of Law Enforcement Officers, by Melissa Littleswhich" had nearly 6,000 FB hits, likes, views, whatever you want to call them, a week ago, and then in the last few days went down to something like 10. Now it's showing "4802 people shared this."
    
    There's something screwy with fb.

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24. 79

    brimancandyposted 13 years ago

    Yeah. I noticed that several of the groups I belonged to are gone.
    And, I have also picked up a few friends who I have no clue who they are, or how they got on my friend list.
    
    Not liking that one bit.

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