We get this question a lot.

There’s no way to accurately identify fake accounts or likes on Facebook or Twitter, though some software companies pretend to.
Often, fake users have more robust profiles and activity than real users, as the spammers know what signals to design for.
We used to be able to filter by demographics, lack of a profile photo, and lack of friends– not anymore with the sophisticated guys.

We do have some manual ways to check for this by looking at funnel behavior– but that’s all that’s really possible now.

You can’t block fake likes, but you can do things like analyze tenure, traffic from Facebook to the web, and conversion values.

We’ve written extensively over the years on why not to buy likes, as well as how people do it.

So what is fake? You have to look at other behavior to see which “fans” don’t seem real– doesn’t have to be Facebook-only behavior.
The percentage of fake fans in general should be a couple of percent, tops unless the page has explicitly bought fans or used an agency that has.

Someone said 7% as a figure, but it’s misreported because of people who create profiles for pages.

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.

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