How are likes counted with Facebook reactions?
One of the first questions I asked myself after the introduction of Facebook reactions yesterday was; how will Facebook likes be counted with all sorts of reactions available?
As bloggers and people who work online we know that social activity is one out of many factors that impact your SERP, that is search engine ranking position. That is why I asked myself how this will be influenced now that people can not only like your articles, but actually show love for them, cry at them, be angry with them, say wow to them and so. Is it therefore better to get 10 likes than to get 2 likes and 8 hearts for an article you share on Facebook? I did a little test and this is what I did to find out how this will show up on and impact your ranking.
I visited an article of mine with about 10 actual Facebook likes. I then shared this article on Facebook, meaning that is should then have 11 likes. I then used a couple of different users and did a total of four actions on the given article. One page I administer said “wow” to the article, one pressed “wow” to the article and two pressed “haha.” The question then was what it would look like as I returned to the article to see the amount of “likes” the article now has according to the stats on the website. In my mind there were two answers to the questions, either 11 or 15.
How to count Facebook likes with Facebook reactions?
It is very easy how Facebook is doing this. All reactions to any post you share on Facebook is counted outwardly as a like. That means my article after getting two Haha, one Love and one Wow moved on from 11 to 15 likes in the article itself. It is very interesting that with this Facebook makes it much easier to actually engage with articles and to them what matters is how many people are engaged in your article, not how many press the “like” button itself.
So, do not be afraid if people use Facebook reactions to actually show another reaction than like, because no matter how they react, what matters is that they actually react!
