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| By Justin Smith | 7 Comments » |
The Facebook username landrush starts tonight at 12:01am EDT, and with it comes potentially the best one-time opportunity for businesses to improve their Facebook identity and SEO by getting a good Facebook vanity URL.
However, as many Page owners have discovered, if your Facebook Page has less than 1,000 fans or was created after May 31, your Page won’t be eligible to get a vanity URL starting tonight. Instead, Facebook says you’ll have to wait until Sunday, June 28 to get a vanity URL for your Page.
Why is Facebook enforcing this rule? Essentially, to mitigate squatting. Facebook wants to make sure every vanity URL that gets registered in the system is authentic, and has put these restrictions in place to prevent speculators from creating thousands of Pages in order to squat on vanity URLs. However, this rule will delay legitimate Page owners with less than 1,000 fans from getting a vanity URL for two weeks as well.
As we detailed earlier this week, Facebook has set up several rules to try to ensure the vanity URL landrush goes as smoothly as possible:
- Facebook is not allowing Page owners to choose generic vanity URLs. The most SEO-able usernames are those that most closely match frequently searched terms, like “flowers” or “pizza.” However, Facebook says that generic words are not available as usernames at this time. Rather, Facebook “encourages all users and Page administrators to create a username that closely matches the true identity of their name or business.”
- Facebook is not allowing Page owners to change or transfer usernames/URLs. Once you pick a username for your page, that’s your page’s username forever – so pick one you’re going to like for the long term. This also means that it will be harder for a black market around usernames to develop.
- Facebook is allowing rights holders to prevent their trademarks from being registered as usernames. If you own a trademark that you want to prevent others from registering as their Facebook username, Facebook has created this form that you can fill out to file the request.
For more comprehensive details and best practices on marketing with Facebook Pages, check out our industry leading Facebook Marketing Bible.
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June 12th, 2009 at 10:50 am
[...] then was informed that Facebook Pages were required to have 1K fans to be eligible. That’s apparently not/no longer true, according to Inside Facebook: However, as many Page owners have discovered, if your Facebook Page [...]
June 13th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] It will be interesting to see if Facebook allows these names to live on – Facebook has built a team to make sure the vanity URLs that are registered are authentic. Some users have already reported having the usernames they registered being taken away. The next couple weeks are likely to be pretty messy as Facebook encounters gray area after gray area when it comes to username allocation. You can learn more about the rules Facebook has set up for vanity URLs for Pages specifically here. [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 12:27 am
[...] landrush officially opened two weeks ago, Pages with under 1,000 fans or created after May 31 still haven’t been allowed to get vanity URLs. However, Facebook is lifting that restriction this weekend: starting at 11:59pm ET on Sunday, June [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
[...] landrushofficially opened two weeks ago, Pages with under 1,000 fans or created after May 31 still haven’t been allowed to get vanity URLs. However, Facebook is lifting that restriction this weekend: starting at 11:59pm ET on Sunday, June [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
If you missed out getting your FB vanity name, get a .TEL instead @ http://www.mytel.me with your name at a cool domain.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Any word on transfers within an account. For example, I want to transfer my URL from the account manager profile to the fan page?
July 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I’m working with a major institution where one of the admins grabbed the wrong vanity URL. I know FB says NO CHANGES but it’s actually erroneous. Any suggestions on how to deal with this?