What is FBCLID?

Let’s start by explaining what exactly is FBCLID.

FBCLID stands for ‘Facebook Click Identifier’, is a new parameter, which Facebook is adding to outbound links shared on Facebook.

So if a link to your site is shared on Facebook now, and someone clicks on it to visit your site, Facebook is adding this parameter to the link.

I haven’t seen any official documentation on what it does but we’d guess it’s a response to recent news that some browsers (e.g. Safari) will soon block third-party tracking cookies.

Until now, Facebook pixel is dependent on 3rd party cookies, which have been problematic, particularly with browsers that do not accept the use of 3rd party cookies.

For the update to take advantage of pixel starts in addition to tracking 3rd party to 1st party tracking opportunities.

 

 

The purpose of FBCLID

The purpose of this update is to improve the coverage of Facebook tracking, whereby conversion tracking, for example, is improved, and links between advertising and conversions are more likely to be detected.

So the update is a nice thing for Facebook advertising, but in addition, the web analyst is also concerned; after the update, a new plugin will appear after the urls that guide the site: FBCLID .

Specifically, the situation in Google Analytics looks like this:

Based on a short review round, FBCLIDes are detected from the link stream of both organic site-targeted and paid ads, as well as by Safari and other browsers.

Depending on the client, the first FBCLID grooves have begun to appear in the analytics fairly immediately after the update notification, and some of the first have been detected a week ago.

 

 

What this means in practice for analytics and SEO:

Web analytics

On the Web analytics side, Facebook’s unique tracking parameters make URL reporting a bunch of unique versions of one beautiful URL.

Web analysts are therefore advised to create a FBCLID filter as soon as possible to keep the Google Analytics outlook clear.

For example, the following filter setting at the Analytics View level corrects the issue at that time:

FBCLIDs in Google Analytics

This is the Facebook parameter FBCLID that uses the same naming tactic as Google’s equivalent (gclid, Google Click Identifier). Thus, the Facebook parameter can also be called Facebook Click Identifier.

FBCLID impact in SEO

The fear of the SEO is that Google starts crawling URLs that are not included in its search results, such as parametric URLs.

In general, there is no need to over-tension with different parameters, but with FBCLID es still so new, the situation is good to ensure just-in-case.

By default, pages will not end up in Google search results unless they are clicked on links such as navigation or body text.

Currently, some FCCLID pages appear in search results, these are likely only momentarily in the search results before Google automatically filters out such urls.  However, at the moment the FBCLID-equipped urls appear to be churning out mainly through public Facebook pages.

FBCLID in Google search results

If you want to play safe, you can add a rel = “canonical” attribute to the pages, linking the same slot without the FB parameters.

For example, if URL is: example.com/product?

fbclid=ih4Ns1kaN4s3kaLAi5iaMerkk3 and, rel = “canonical” should be shown at example.com/product . This is also the best practice of SEO, applicable for your venue website, so if you have not implemented it before, now could be the right time.

You can protect yourself even more against the fact that the fbclid parameter is blocked by the Google Search Console.

It can be done by navigating to the old interface Crawl → URL Parameters, and by setting the particular FBCLID to be blocked there.

Summary:

Pixel upgrade improves the coverage of Facebook tracking. As a result of the reform, FBCLIDs infecting urls confuse url reporting in analytics → measures required.  The reform should not have a negative impact on SEOChecklist for actions: Set the FBCLID filter to Google Analytics, use the rel = “canonical” attributes that refer to the url on your siteBlock indexing of parameters in Search Console.