In late September, brands started to sound the alarm: The reach on their page had dropped a reported 30-40% overnight. The reactions ranged from irritable to apocalyptic. Now that the dust has settled and there is a real sample to look at, Socialtyze conducted a study of brands that we felt would best reflect any Facebook algorithm changes.

Our goal was to see if Facebook was keeping its promise to simultaneously make the news feed a less spam-ridden experience AND continue to provide qualified impressions to users with a history of brand engagement. As our CEO Mateo Gutierrez pointed out in his Huffington Post article, “Facebook sees that the future of brands within Facebook is not one of amassing fans and simply publishing to them repeatedly.”

So, we set out to test whether the drop in reach resulted in an equal drop in engagement. If Facebook’s algorithm tweak was successful, engagement should only see a slight dip.

The graph above shows the evolution of reach within our database over the last few weeks. As you can clearly see, the bottom fell out during the middle of September, with a 32% drop from the previous week. This was coupled with an additional 14% drop during the following week. This is consistent with other findings and outside publications, so there were no real surprises.

However, despite the drastic drop in reach, engagement remained consistent, even showing a 3% increase the week of the algorithm tweak. It wasn’t until mid October that any significant dip took place, and even then the losses were small (just over 5%) compared to the losses in reach.

So what does this mean? It seems that Facebook, in an odd way, has done brands a favor, removing impressions to users who would have considered them a nuisance. But not to worry, they’ve kept all the fun people at the party: the clickers, the likers and the sharers!