How to verify your Facebook Page

If your Facebook page is a Local Business or a Companies & Organisations type, you might be able to get a grey verification tick. It’s a similar process to verifying your Google My Business page, and is done over the phone like you do with Bing, Yelp or Apple Maps.

Benefits of a verified Facebook page

Credibility

Having the little “verified” tick helps customers know they are visiting the genuine page for a local business or brand. It’s an extra level of credibility online and one that is good to have in a world where it’s so easy to set up fake pages.

Reduce fake page impact

Note I said impact, more on that in a sec.

What isn’t often talked about is how fake pages can affect your fans. There’s obviously the misinformation angle. But there’s more.

If someone is pretending to be your store or brand, they can set up a page that looks perfectly legit and create a whole other following. Given how challenging it already is to get impressions as a business (your post showing in your customer’s timeline), having another page hijacking your audience isn’t nice at all.

Woot! A Tick ✓

Facebook also adds a little tick next to your page name in the search results dropdown. This helps searchers can get a hint as to which page is the official one.

Local businesses and companies get a little grey tick (personally I think it should stand out more – I’m partial to a green one).

Here’s how to verify your Facebook business page

1. Login to Facebook and switch to your page.
2. Click the Settings link in the upper right hand corner. Note – you do need to be the page admin.
3. Under General, third item down is “page verification”. If you do not see Page verification, then for some reason Facebook has decided your business is not eligible. They offer no explanation as to why a business might not be verifiable, but my own theory is it has to do with your page history/activity, your industry, age of page, and a few other factors.If the page is not verified, click the “Page has not been verified” text and you’ll be lead through a series of pop-up screens.
4. Click the “<br>” link.
5. You’ll be greeted with a little box telling you the benefits of being verified.The window before and the first bullet point here says you’ll show up higher in search results – Facebooks results, let’s be clear.  I’m not convinced that has the weight you’d like to think (note the Guinness example above), as I was easily able to identify spam pages which showed in the search results higher than the verified page.
   Click the Get Started button.
6. Enter your phone details. This number should be a publicly verifiable number (eg on your website).  If you don’t want to receive a call (Why wouldn’t you? Makes the process super-quick!), you can verify the business with documents, such as a phone bill.  You’ll then have the chance to upload pictures of your documentation.
   Despite Facebook stating the number must be publicly verifiable for your business, I was able to trigger a verification for a business where the number entered was not publicly linked to the business in question.  It may be that because I’m an admin it accepted the number, or it may be a total security failure.
7. You’ll then receive a call (one came from a phone number starting with 00011, another from California with a 650 area code).  That will be a recording, and will give you a 4 digit PIN.
8. Enter the PIN into the box waiting for you on the screen and click continue.
9. When that number is processed, you’ll get a happy little box reminiscent of the first, saying your page is verified.  For the third time they say you’ll show up higher in their search results. Again I say take that with a grain of salt.

This is not a fix, rather it’s a help

Unfortunately, even with a verified page, spammers can still set up fake pages. But it does make it a little harder to capture new people.

You’ll still need to monitor periodically for spam pages and request they be removed.

This also doesn’t boost your reach or engagement.  Your posts still have to stand on their own – as something people want to share or interact with.

And keep on posting.

Dont’ change your strategy or rest on your laurels that you now have a verified page and all is safe in the world.

After having verified a few pages now, I personally believe this verification is more symbolic than anything else. Still, it’s worth doing.  Any little bit to help your credibility online is worth the couple of minutes this will take.

Hopefully this is an area Facebook will invest some resources in the future, especially if they want to be serious about entering the local search space.