By Erik Leist, Internet Marketing Evangelist at Internet Marketing Association

You can expect to lose some Facebook Page Likes in the coming days, but don’t worry! Facebook has announced an update to remove memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts.

The update attempts to make audience data more meaningful for businesses. By removing inactive Facebook accounts, businesses can access current insights on the fans that actively follow the Page. A tailored list will also make it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like lookalike audiences.

Facebook already filters out likes and comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts, so this update keeps data consistent, and will not affect existing interactions.

In the future, any accounts that are voluntarily deactivated or memorialized will be removed from a Page’s like count. If a deactivated account is reactivated, the account will be re-added to a Page’s like count.

The dip in page likes will be proportional to the number of fans. For a page with only a few hundreds of likes it could be a very small drop, but for larger pages, the effect will be more noticeable.

Losing page likes is always disconcerting for admins; nevertheless the update will hopefully provide better data, and an augmented loyal following.