Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Changing FaceBook Username / url - do you retain your likes/fans
-
hi
just a quickie, anyone know off hand when you change your FB username/url do you retain or lose the likes/fans ?
cheers
dan
-
many thanks Erica
-
Hi Dan,
If you go through Facebook for your name change, you do not lose any of your fans. They are all transferred seamlessly. Yes, your vanity URL pointing to your page will change, but with Moz's experience, Facebook did a redirect from our old vanity URL (seomoz) to our new one (Moz), so you'll still retain any links built to your Facebook page and the resulting traffic.
Best of luck o the rebrand!

-
Thanks Bex but im referring to username/url not page name of a page with a few thousand fans, so trying to find out if safe to change username/url without losing fans/likes
-
If you have less than 200 fans i think you can change the username of the page (only ones) and you will retain the fans that you have. However, if you have more than 200 fans then you can ask some of your loyal ones to "suggest an edit". If they know what you want to change your page name to (if its something more appropriate) then get them to fill this in. If you get about 15 i think it is suggests in about 2 days, Facebook should ask you if you want to change your name.
I have never tried this myself, however, i have heard of other who have said its worked. All "likers" kept. Remember If anyone is searching for you with your old name they won't find you once you have changed it as Facebook doesn't redirect. Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google SERP shows wrong (and inappropriate) thumbnail for Facebook videos?
Hello I'm running into a strange issue with at least one of my client's video. The video is posted on Facebook. When searching for the video on Google, the SERP shows a completely wrong, and inappropriate, thumbnail image. (And in one case the preview video starts playing within Google SERP.) It also seems that Google is indexing various countries' facebook page for the same video separately (it-it.facebook.com, fr-fr.facebook.com, etc). Note that only the thumbnail and preview video within Google are wrong; if you click on the link, you see the correct video and page. I hesitate to divulge the actual client video, but there are some reports on Google's search community about the same behavior: Here's one that stargs back in March: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/33760205?hl=en and a more recent one: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/71452151?hl=en It looks increasingly like a bug in some google algorithm, but nobody at google seems to acknowledge that. I've unpublished the original video from FB and submitted an 'outdated content' removal to Google, which is pending. In the meantime, my questions for our group of experts here: Has anyone else experienced this and any other suggestionso n how to fix? If we assume that this is not a google bug: how could a malicious actor or black-hat SEO influence Google's algorithms to cause this? Thanks, mickey
Social Media | | infamia0 -
Facebook Name Change and Effect on SEO
Hey Mozzers! Trying this one again as my timing was probably pretty bad with Easter. Working with a company who has about 20K followers on Facebook and about 500 backlinks to their current facebook page. They want to change the name of the page to better reflect the business. I need to advise on this but I'm not sure of and how it will effect them. Any one had any experience in this area?
Social Media | | wearehappymedia0 -
Facebook Page - About/Description/General About/Mission - Questions
Hi, Im just setting up a FB fan page for a client How terrible is it to use clients websites home page descriptive copy as the Facebook page long description ? Language is in Turkish which i don't speak so i'm not able to edit a new version of it just for FB and no budget to hire Turkish speaker to come up with something. So was going to copy & paste but that would be duplicate with HP obviously. How important is it to fill in 'Mission Statement' & 'General About' ? Especially if long description likely to already include that info ? I think long descrip is important for FB pages on seo etc etc but a good one eliminates importance of 'Mission' & 'General About', or is it still advisable to fill these in or are they just extra boxes for flexibility ? I take it when it comes to securing a vanity url (once we hit 25+ fans) for a foreign language version FB page it should ideally be brand name (which includes a keyword) in the local/target language ? The page name is already the brand name in English but since contains keyword is it best to rename into local target language similarly to the url for consistency and local targeting or better to keep one in Turkish and one in English ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How do I remove 11,000 spam facebook page likes received overnight complete with negative ratings/reviews?
My page has 11,000 spammed page likes. Only 250 are legitimate. These spammers are leaving 1 star ratings. Facebook is limiting the number of likes I can delete. I can report some fake ratings as spam but, again, facebook is limiting what I see. Any suggestions on how to proceed? Update: I found a work around for the negative ratings/reviews. I can change the category of my page to "other community" to remove the rating system from the page https://www.facebook.com/changeratings/posts/445471405558046. That still leaves me with 11,000 illegitimate likes that are stealing away from my 250 legitimate fans from seeing our posts. Should I start over?
Social Media | | jstallings0 -
How to shorten URL adress?
hi,
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz
in my business Facebook page I have my website address. I want to track how many people arriving through this URL address to my site. I want to use URL builder but the final URL is too long and not pretty. I thought about using bitly.com but I need that the address on my page will contain the name of my brand. any ideas hot to shorten the URL address and still be able to track the data? thank you all.0 -
Best option for Facebook Page/Usernames?
Hey guys My first post here! currently trialling seomoz and impressed so far 🙂 My question relates to a choice of Facebook page/username for a client whose preference is to refer to their online business name by the domain name, where this business name includes his two most important keywords. So as an example: firstsecondthird.co.uk Now in terms of seo that's fine as search engines factor in keywords in the domain name, and even referring to domain name in website copy does not seem to pose too many issues. However on Facebook I've noticed that if we go with page name of: FirstSecondThird (obsiously we can't add .co.uk - I've used camel case for readability) then when using the facebook search the page does NOT get listed for any of the keywords as it appears it only matches on whole strings. So I'm going to recommend that he changes Faceook page name to First Second Third (with spaces) even though client does not really like this option. Do you guys think that makes sense? Also if I do make that change should I also go with fixed Username of First-Second-Third i.e. with hyphens or stick with one long string i.e. FirstSecondThird, which matches the domain name? Any advice appreciated. PS hope this is under right topic- several others seemed applicable Thanks
Social Media | | redactuk0 -
Anyone tried out facebook like services from Fiverr?
Fiverr offers services like 1000 likes for $5!!! (and they seem to deliver) Sounds great but what is the catch? Has anyone tried out these type of services and more importantly what are the potential penalties?
Social Media | | Wallander0 -
Paid likes?
Has anyone used paid likes for Google +, Facebook, etc. for liking articles, videos, etc. on your own sites? Is this a safe, SEO practice?
Social Media | | Stevej240