Groundbreaking study by Echobox exposes the hidden penalizations imposed on content publishers
London, UK – September 29, 2020: Facebook’s hidden penalization algorithm was revealed today in new research published by Echobox, the AI-powered social publishing platform.
The study, entitled Facebook’s penalization algorithm revealed: How Facebook secretly penalizes publishers, pulls back the veil on one of the biggest secrets in social media publishing. Following analysis of hundreds of thousands of Facebook posts from some of the world’s leading publishers, Echobox found that:
- Facebook penalizes many leading content publishers for posting at what it considers to be the wrong frequency
- Many content publishers are unaware and/or not taking mitigating measures
- Huge swathes of content, including those from leading news, fashion, lifestyle and sports brands may never make the News Feed as a result
- Any company that publishes regularly on Facebook could be missing out on valuable reach and traffic that can have a significant cumulative impact
- Penalizations are unique to each publisher
Antoine Amann, CEO of Echobox, said: “This study shows just how critical it is for publishers avoid Facebook’s penalization and to maximize visibility and traffic throughout the day. We recommend all publishers read the research.”
Selected highlights from the report’s Summary:
- Publishers’ referral traffic from Facebook decreases when posts are published at certain intervals
- While only Facebook can confirm whether it actively penalizes publishers based on post frequency, we have observed a statistically significant and nonlinear impact of post frequency on publishers’ Facebook traffic levels
- Facebook algorithms, whether directly or as an indirect consequence, penalize publishers for posting either too frequently or too infrequently
- Facebook penalization thresholds are unique to each publisher as what constitutes posting “too frequently” or “too infrequently” varies by publisher
- There are no one-size-fits-all recommendations for post frequency and penalization
- Content publishers of all types and sizes are subject to these penalties, whether they’re delivering breaking news or resharing evergreen content
- Determining optimal post frequency can be extremely complex. In addition to studying their own post performance in detail, publishers need access to an extensive dataset containing post performance data for other publishers to essentially reverse-engineer Facebook’s algorithms. Therefore, determining optimal post frequency at any given moment is virtually impossible for a single publisher to achieve on their own
About Echobox
Echobox is the new standard in social media publishing, chosen by more than 800 of the world’s leading publishers, including Newsweek, The Times, The Telegraph, Handelsblatt, Le Monde and Conde Nast. Publishers share more than 10 million posts and reach billions of people with Echobox each year. Echobox’s research and insights have been written about by many of the world’s leading publications including the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Techcrunch and Forbes. Read more at www.echobox.com/resources.
