On Tuesday I discussed how to use questions on your Facebook Page to dramatically boost traffic to your company blog. The one thing that I glossed over quickly was how Facebook calculates share and like counts. The number that Facebook currently displays is the total number of likes, shares, and comments on any given link. Many people previously weren’t aware of how that number is calculated which is why I’ve gone and created the Facebook Like Count Calculator.
Since we just launched it, the calculator can sometime take a while to load, however we’ll release an asynchronous version shortly which doesn’t run into the same type of page load issues. The tool was created to simply illustrate how Facebook calculates Facebook share and like counts. The first thing that may come to mind is whether or not this is how Facebook should display counts? Since it’s not actually the number of likes or shares, why is Facebook displaying it like it is?
I would argue that this calculation benefits the publisher. The greater the number in the like or share box, the more likely a visitor will click on it. While it’s not the most accurate representation, it’s helping out the publisher, and ultimately, that’s Facebook’s primary goal with the like and the share buttons. If you want to see how share and like counts are calculated, go check out our Facebook Like Count Calculator.
![[Inside Social Apps 2012]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/ISA2012_336x100_F_RegisterNow.gif)
![[AllFacebook Stats: Facebook Analytics for Your Business]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/stpro_allfacebookstats.gif)
![[How can Facebook change your business?]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/FMB_A_MAY2011_336x100_F.gif)
Nice tool. Thanks!
Concerning the statistics – I really hate this behaviour:
Let's say, there is the article on my website: http://www.my-website.com/some-article.html
And let's say, the like button in the article indicates 86 likes.
Then I share the article on the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/my-website.com
The fans can see the shared article and how many likes they can see?
ZERO!
Of course – until some of them click the Like button under the shared story.
I don't like the fact, that the numbers are not connected – users liked the same article,
the article has its unique ID in the Open Graph, so why the heck are not these numbers merged together?
Comment by Jaromir — July 29, 2010 @ 6:36 am
I don't think you're Facebook Like count calculator is working correctly. I just tried to calculate the Dippin' Dots page at http://www.facebook.com/DippinDots which has a 1,482,707 fans and 558 interactions this week but your calculator claimed it only had 5 shares, 1 comment and 1 like which is not true. Here is a link to the screenshot I took -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/ntho/4841138833/
Comment by Anthony — July 29, 2010 @ 11:36 am
Or use http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-like-count/ , which its own URL. The "like" button reports a different number than the call. I assume it's using the insights API, they must be messing up some numbers there.
Comment by eric — July 30, 2010 @ 11:20 am
Thanks for this tool, very useful and clear results.
Do you have any ressources or URL where i could find the way you did it.
I'd like to implement a ranking on Top Likes on my site and don't know (yet) how to do so.
Thanks for your help !
Comment by Yann — September 7, 2010 @ 9:17 am
This is how the calculation is done! http://www.sundh.com/blog/2010/11/get-likes-on-ur...
You can get number of likes for different unique urls on your site and see how many who shared the link.
Comment by Ellen Sundh — December 25, 2010 @ 6:18 pm
I have a Like button on my web page. Facebook Insights shows the Like count for the URL however there is no count shown next to the Like button on my web page. This is an example web page that has Facebook Insights count but count does not show next to the Like button on the web page. http://this1that1whatever.com/ Does anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this misbehavior? Thanks.
Comment by David — January 11, 2011 @ 2:21 pm
Actually, the number shown on the Like button includes:
-The number of likes of the URL
-The number of shares of the URL (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)
-The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about the URL
-The number of inbox messages containing the URL as an attachment.
Comment by Annonymous — May 12, 2011 @ 4:23 pm
I sometimes question the sanity and stability of Facebook features such as Insights. I don't know that Facebook is collecting and displaying Like button counts correctly. I've also noticed that wall post impression counts for my Facebook (fan) page have been reset in some cases.
Comment by David — October 23, 2011 @ 9:59 am