Facebook’s Edge Rank Demystified

By Josh Williams
Aug, 23, 2011

Lately, there have been many attempts to use Edge Rank as a selling point.  These pitches claim that they can increase your page's Edge Rank or that you can advertise on a page with a certain Edge Rank.  This approach fails to understand what Edge Rank really is.  Edge Rank is Facebook's algorithm that decides what posts or Objects are most likely to show up in a person's "Top News" feed.  Among other things, it's based on three main factors: affinity, weight, and decay.

  • Affinity is the relationship between the user and the Object's creator.  The more often you interact with a person or page, the greater the affinity.
  • Weight is the importance of a certain action.  For example, a comment carries more weight than a Like because it takes more time and effort.
  • Decay looks at how old an Object is.  The older it gets, the less important it is.

Edge Rank is focused on the Object, not a page.  We can't see Edge Rank for a particular page because that's not how it works.  We also can't see what an individual Object's Edge Rank is because Edge Rank is unique to the relationship between the Object and user.  Edge Rank for a single Object will vary from user to user depending on how you've interacted with the page before, what time of day you're seeing the Object versus when it was posted, and how other users have already interacted with it.

Basically, this means that when you're posting things to Facebook, you want to encourage people to interact as quickly and as often as possible.  The question remains: if Edge Rank is different for each Object and user combination, how can you make sure you're doing what you can to maximize it?  Here are a few tips:

  1. Encourage engagement - Post something that resonates with your audience.
  2. Include a specific call to action - People respond to stimulus.  If you want a specific action, simply ask.  Include phrases like "Click Like" or "Comment on this post".
  3. Know what time of day your audience is most engaged - Since timing and decay are factors, your Objects will be more successful if you post them when your audience is most ready to engage.  This is different for everyone, so consult Facebook's Insights to see when your audience engages most.