Friday, September 17, 2010

Why could my Facebook Page not Public: Dig What? E1

Recently I came across a simple, yet silly problem which had every chance to create big impact. When I tried clicking one of our client's FaceBook page that was showing up in Google Search Results landed me to Facebook homepage - which means that page is turned to be not-to-public view. And when I tried to find the root-cause, found that it is all because of the Age Restrictions set to "People above 17+" (that was reset recently unknowingly by one of the page admins).

This age restricted Facebook page will be shown to viewers' whose identity is assured to be above 17 yrs i.e., only if you are logged in and if you stated your age us above 17 yrs - OR otherwise you will be landing to Facebook homepage.

AddOn: The other chance for your FB page being going non-public suddenly could be setting the Published option to "Unpublished".

So what impact could it have created?

- lose all potential traffic from Google and so lose 'Fans' who are not logged in.

- get de-indexed by Google eventually - lose a listing in SERPs for business name search.

- losing the chance to introduce the page to non-facebook viewers.

Dig What? E1 Lesson:

However, I couldn't think of this Age Restriction setting could be the cause, when I first traced the non-public view. I was looking for some major pitfall that could be lying behind this - and this insight did give me a newer perseverance

"When you are given with a problem, look into every single bit of information, elements in front of you - small or big - the solution can be behind anything that you wouldn't have thought off"

PS: BTW, I have to explain what does this Dig What? E1 mean? - I am planning to dig problems that I come across in my everyday professional life and try to share them. So this is my Dig What? Edition 1 . Watch this space to get the latest editions.

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