Should a facebook 'like' button on a website use the actual website url as the 'liked' item, or the url of the website's facebook fan page?

Question

E.g. should the like button use www.somewebsite.com or facebook.com/somewebsite as the 'liked' item?

Just to clarify, I realise that individual pages would do better with their own like buttons, pointing to the actual content. But this question is in the context of the home page - i.e. 'liking' the whole site.

Answer 1

I have to disagree with both the answers currently posted here.

It has become the norm to associate 'like' buttons with the content you are currently reading. I think registering a 'like' for a Facebook page or even top level domain when you are in content is misleading.

The act of liking a Facebook page is different to liking content, it appears different in the users timeline and is recorded differently.

By all means have a 'Like us on Facebook' or something like that with a link to your Facebook page, but don't hide it behind the simple 'Like' button.

Answer 2

Most buttons include the url of the specific page viewed, that way a user can 'like' a blog post for example, rather than just liking the blog's Facebook page.

That said, if you have a website with little or no content, sometimes people would prefer to let people like it's homepage or Facebook page, no matter where the like button is places, and that way all likes are grouped together (i.e. you'd have "404 people like Creek's Cakes" Instead of 4-5 people liking each individual post or page of your site.

So it all depends on what you'd like to promote.

Answer 3

If you want to attract new visitors for your website than use www.somewebsite.com and if you want more users for your Facebook page take that URL.

Answer 4

It's very simple:

• on blog post pages, article pages, video pages, etc. use facebook like for that particular url (*).
• and use your facebook page url every other page: home page and other pages which does not contain specific content, like category pages, tag pages, search result pages, static pages like contact form.

(*): For blog posts and articles, I strongly suggest to use some redirected canonical url instead pretty urls. For example: example.com/articles.php=1234 redirects to example.com/articles/cool-content-here Then use example.com/articles.php=1234 with facebook like, and also publish this url as canonical in html head.