With direct access to Facebook Page Insights data, you can build a deeper understanding of your community and closer relationships with your customers.
fb_page_insights
fb_post_insights
fb_post_stats
We collect data from Facebook Page Insights API once a day. This ensures we are within the limits Facebook places on API calls.
Understanding Posts
A post created on June 1, 2021, may still have activity on it as of June 1, 2022. Our update process uses a 1-year lookback for created dates of posts for a page. We find all the post IDs created in the prior year and re-request and update the stats for each. The logic used to retrieve Facebook post data each day is as follows:
Select a list of post_ids with a created_date >= today - 365 days for each subscribed page_id
Retrieve all lifetime metrics available for each post_id identified in (1)
A post_message is not static, meaning it is subject to change given they are user-editable. For example, assume you have a post-ID 232424248105860.
The post message changed 6 times over a given time period. As a result, we are storing each snapshot of the message at the point in time we requested it. This can explain some variations over time you may see in the data.
Encoding
The data has ;) and in the UI, Facebook is converting this to :
So the post itself has the characters, but the UI is the emoji.
Understanding Facebook Data Latency & Accuracy
When we call for Facebook Page Insights data we are requesting data for 5 days in the past. For example, we make a request on 1/6/2021 to the API for data dated 1/1/2021. Why the delay? While Facebook states that "most metrics will update once every 24 hours" we have found this to be highly variable. We have found that the data takes longer to "settle" in the Facebook Insights system.
If we call more aggressively, Facebook returns NULL or empty values for metrics. When this occurs we have no way to determine if a NULL or empty value is the result of there being no activity on a page or that the truth had not been settled by Facebook for a metric. Supplying this unsettled data can disrupt reporting by providing inaccurate or misleading data. For us, we have seen that 5 days is the safe window to ensure we are getting everything. Yes, we are making a trade-off of recency for accuracy and consistency. If Facebook moves to a guaranteed delivery model where they state "all metrics are updated at least once every 24 hours" then we will adjust our processing timing!
Check out Facebook Developer docs for more details about Facebook Page Insights API.