Targeted Negative "SEO" Tactics: Facebook

The attached figures will show how Facebook's algorithims are sensitive to negative SEO tactics.

 

Indie Review Magazine obtained the majority of their likes via paid advertising through Facebook. 

 

They achieved ad performance in both international and US markets of 0.01 to 0.03 cents a like on average. However, the magazine is suffering from a very serious troll sitaution. 

 

A violent stalker - who has also been sending employees death threats and threatening messages/etc on social media sites - began targeting the magazine's facebook page as soon as it obtained some success. 

 

You can see from the graphs that the organic likes (the light purple) increased as the paid likes increased, but decreased disproportionatly to the paid likes. 

 

Thus, a massive decline in the organic likes directly preceeded a steady decline in paid page likes, which was a direct result of plumuting ad performance (because the "ranking" algorithims at Facebook, disproportionately value page un-likes). As a result it is possible for negative SEO firms and/or individuals to game the system. 

 

As a result of these negative SEO tactics the magazine has noted ad performance which ranges from 0.02 cents per like and swiftly changing to greater than 4 dollars a like. This is what they refer to as the "money dump". 

 

Slowly over time, the stalker has built up greater than one thousand fake scripted accounts, that he usses to automatically unlike their page whenever a promising post is made. 

 

We suspect and our data highly suggests that Facebook's content ranking algorithims are especially sensitive to this tactic, thus it is possible that there are many pages out there who are suffering from dismal ad performance which may be directly related to sitatuions out of their control. 

 

Negative SEO tactics emloyed by a competitor or in the case of Indie Review Magazine, a stalker, can have a very significant negative impact on the performance of an advertising campaign. 

 

Without acess to Facebook's ranking algorithims we cannot say for certain what is going on behind the scenes at Facenook, but it is obvious from our data that Facebook's algorithims are very suceptible to negative SEO tactics. 

 

If you would like to contact me regarding this reserach, you may email me at Jamie@ITSmoleculardesign.com.