Merging Duplicate Facebook Pages

If you're the page manager of a Facebook page, especially one that's
popular, you've likely encountered the issue of dealing with
duplicates pages either from your own organisation's mishaps, excited
fan communities or even from copycats.

The process of handling duplicate Facebook pages is probably one of
the least "sexy" aspects of using social media, despite it being
essential for your company's presence on the social network.

It's likely one of the more frustrating things a community manager has
to deal with, since the process of reporting duplicates and removing
them isn't always easy and can be a time consuming aspect of your
Facebook marketing.

It's not an isolated problem

According to The Next Web 5.5 per cent and 11.2 per cent of all
Facebook accounts are fake, which can account for 67.65 to 137.76
million fake accounts being used every month. These fake accounts
include both Facebook profiles and pages, sometimes misrepresenting
both individuals or businesses.

Your business isn't alone, even the most well-known, largest
organizations on Facebook deal with issues related to duplicate pages.

For example, a search for the 'Kmarts Facebook Page reveals the many
other pages that exist on Facebook that are either community-run,
copycat, or duplicates of pages for the chain's many store locations.

Some businesses have an official verified badge at the top of their
page that helps clarify the validity of their page and gives them
priority on Facebook search, but many other businesses aren't as lucky
enough to have access to this feature, especially small to medium size
businesses, to clarify which page officially represents their
business.

Regularly dealing with the duplicate Facebook pages of your business
is important since they can potentially misrepresent your company,
distract Facebook users from your official messaging on the social
network, could affect the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising
and litter Facebook search results with the wrong listings.

To appropriately deal with this issue, Facebook offers a reporting
feature that lets you merge duplicate pages with your own pages that
official represent your business. However, this process can be easier
said then done.

How to report duplicate pages you manage

The best-case scenario when merging duplicate pages is when you are
already the manager of the pages you wish to duplicate. This is very
easily done, especially if there was a mistake internally with setting
up more than one page for a part, department, product line, brand, or
location of your business.

Once merged, the page that you've decided to keep will gain all the
likes and check-ins from the other pages that were merged with it,
while all the content like photos, Facebook posts and all other data
from the other pages will be deleted.

There shouldn't be any issues with merging pages that you already
manage on behalf of your business. To prevent any potential issues,
make sure that the Facebook pages being merged are a match in terms of
their overall subject matter including name, about section, and the
description of the page.

As the page manager, these sections can easily be changed to match one
another on the duplicate page and make it more likely it will merge
with the correct page without issue.

How to report duplicate pages you don't manage

When there's a duplicate page that you don't currently manage the
process requires a few more steps to complete. First, start by
visiting the duplicate page that is currently misrepresenting your
business. To fix this, you've got to gain ownership of the duplicate
page to allow your team to merge it properly.

On the top right hand side of any Facebook page with the latest layout
as of summer 2014, locate where it says "like," "follow," and
"message." To the right of those buttons is another with three dots,
click on it and scroll down the menu that pops out to reveal a "report
page" option. Click on the "report page" option to reveal the
following menu of options about why you'd like to report the
particular page for being a duplicate.