Recently we’ve noticed a drop off in ranking related to clients that would appear to have an excellent like and follow count. On the surface these businesses would appear to be doing very well with lots of likes and follows, but scratch the surface and everything is not what it would seem.

We are unique in the way that we log historical like and follow data. So, we are able to see if a client’s like and follow count is rising over time and the rate at which it’s going up. This is how we spotted the issue. We were noticing that some of our new clients were coming to us with a high volume of likes and follows then over time shedding them. Initially we put this down to a natural drop off, but then we noticed that their rankings were dropping simultaneously so we decided to investigate further.


Facebook frowns upon people buying likes and it would
appear that Google do as well.

After a few weeks of investigation we found that the reason for the drops were due to these clients having bought likes and follows off dodgy websites.

These sites are generally based outside of the UK/US and will offer you the ability to buy around 5,000 likes and follows for say $50. The problem is that all of these likes and follows are generated via fake Facebook and Twitter profiles. Then over time Facebook and Twitter establishes and removes these fake profiles which results in a large amount of these likes and follows being removed.

Generally you may not think this is an issue, but in an age where Google is spam crazy this is a perfect way for them to see (in an automated way) if a webmaster is using black hat techniques to artificially improve their social signals. The rise in like and follower numbers is not an issue but the drop is. This is noted by Google and can result in a drop in ranking.


With every Penguin update Google have clamped
down heavily on any signs of spam.

In reaction to this we have put an alert system in place. This system will automatically alert you if your like and/or follow count goes down. We can then investigate this and look for a solution to avoid any ranking disruption before it happens.

The joy of our like to follow system (available as part of our quarterly service) is that all of the likes and follows generated are from other real people so they are high quality and future proof. You may not get 10,000 overnight but over time the benefits will be massive.

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions please get in touch.