When I published the post last week on how to convert your personal profile to a fan page, I got asked if you could merge a personal with a fan page? The answer is no. You also cannot merge a group and a fan page. However, you can merge two pages together, IF one of them is a community or place page.
For example, sometimes you see companies have what looks like a Wikipedia page on Facebook. This is a community page or place page. Usually businesses set this up early on when they weren’t sure what to do with Facebook and now have two page accounts on Facebook. No need. You only need one presence. If you have a community page and a fan page, your best bet is to combine them to make it easier for prospects and customers who are doing a search for your business on Facebook. Remember, it’s all about making it easy for them to connect.
Here’s how you do it:
1. Click Edit Page on the page you want to KEEP.
2. Click on Resources (in left nav)
3. Click on Merge Duplicate Pages (you will ONLY see this if the other page has the EXACT same name and if you are the Page Owner of both pages)
4. When the pop-up box appears, check the box and then click the button to Merge pages. NOTE: There is no going back once you do this.
See the benefits of doing this below image.
Here’s what the steps look like:
The benefits of doing this are:
1. You’ll only have to worry about managing one page instead of two
2. You’ll instantly increase your number of fans on your fan page.
3. It will be seamless to the fans of the other page and you’ll appear in their news feed like you have been. For tips on how to make sure you appear in their news feed, see this previous post.
Hi, really interesting, but when you write “you will ONLY see this if the other page has the EXACT same name” do you mean “name” or “username”?
I work with artists and some of them got “community pages” created by Facebook, based on/populated by Wikipedia based content, when it launched OpenGraph some time ago (2010?). These pages aggregate posts made by FBers, through a search on the artist’s “name” itself.
The problem is they create a conflict with official artists’ pages (get the “also at” section or music played…) IF the artists chose a different username than their “official” name…
When these pages were launched one could request to gain access to these pages’ administration, but FB never got back, explaining how to… You can’t report these pages as “duplicate” as you can’t type what you want in the box. Didn’t find any other way to get in touch with FB support about this problem…
Wrote a blog post serie (in French but easy to translate…) on Music, artists, FB and OpenGraph, where other specific problems appear… http://www.cybear.eu/facebook-musique-open-graph-protocol-artists-pages/
Sincerely
DJM
Hi DJM – it’s the name of the page, so if the community page is called The Slants and the fan page is called Slants – they cannot be combined. But if that fan page were called The Slants then it could be combined. Does that answer your question? If there is any type of copyright infringement for the artist (i.e. confusion of their name/impostor) you can report it to Facebook directly. Each type of violation has a separate URL. Mari Smith has a list of Facebook Help URLs on her site here: http://www.marismith.com/how-contact-facebook-directory-of-forms/ Hope that helps.
Hi,
I stumbled on this page when a Google Alert triggered an automatic search for “The Slants.” (Hi Tracy).
I’ve run into the same situation myself, you can’t help what Facebook automatically creates and their response in duplicated pages is slow at best (especially if the information is aggregated from another source).
What I’d recommend you do in these instances is to work with the original source. For example, if it is a Wikipedia page, you can edit it and have it link to your official Facebook page. However, beyond that, there isn’t much you can do other than to delete the current page and reregister with the username that you’d like (if it is available). Many artists try and work around this by doing something like “artistname_official” or “artistnameband” if their name is already taken
Thanks Simon. That’s great advice.
Thx Simon,
Great idea to modify the Wikipedia page. I’ll do that.
Thx Tracy, I understoof it this way, but wanted to be sure… Because the “Wikipedia” page FB created has the same name too, and no way to get rid of it, or claim it back… no way to report it either…
What I did:
I decided to create a new “official” page for the artist with his full name (this time) and “Official” appended (I usually do this for others, but he wanted something else the 1st time…) as username.
So far, the “merge pages” appeared on the page I don’t want to keep… I’ll wait a bit to see if it appears on the new one…
As the music tab in “admin page” was there, I could request to have music appear on the page, by defining it as the Official Page… Hope this will help, too…
Wait and see…
Will keep you informed.
Sincerely
DJM
BTW, Deleting the page means losing all the fans and content posted since 2009…
Will hope there’s a better way than start it all over again…
Deleting any page will lose all content and fans, however, when you merge pages, it actually carries over the fans to the new page. I just did it last week for a client and it worked beautifully. In regard to not seeing the merge page, that’s surprising – it should show up right away. So something must be different. Can you copy and paste the links to the pages you want to merge or email me at tracy@socialstrand.com with them, I’d be happy to take a look. Cheers.
Hi again,
Here’s the page I want to “delete” http://www.facebook.com/koradjeli (it has the “merge pages” option)
Here’s the new page I’d like to keep http://www.facebook.com/DjeliMoussaDiawaraOfficial (it doesn’t have “yet” the “merge pages” option)
Thanks in advance for your help or any idea… I’ve been struggling with this for many months…
Sincerely
DJM
Try Reporting the page you want to delete as a duplicate page of the page you want to keep. And copy and paste the URL in when it asks you for the name of the duplicate page. Try that, let me know what happens.
I’m in the same position as many of you..
We have many fake pages I can’t seem to kill
For instance…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Countryside-Bar-Grill/108200042554783
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Countryside-Bar/194360367249963
http://www.facebook.com/pages/countryside-bar-n-grill/156430827710989
Are all fake, all created by god knows who.
I’ve begged Facebook for almost a year, and NOTHING has been done.
This is our official page –
http://www.facebook.com/CountrysideBar
I want all of those rolled into that and the old listings removed, and have received no help whatsoever. I’ve reported, I’ve messaged, and now we are losing valuable contact with our customers at check ins and those who like us.
Hi Charles, Facebook will respond to trademark infringement or violation of intellectual property. Have you tried this:
“If someone has created an account to impersonate or imitate you, please go to the impostor profile (timeline) and click “Report this Person” in the left column. Check the “Report this Person” box, choose “Fake Account” as the reason, and add “Impersonating me or someone else” as the report type. Be sure to add a valid web address (URL) leading to the real profile (timeline), so we can review the information.”
Or tried reporting an IP infringement? https://www.facebook.com/help/contact_us.php?id=208282075858952
Yes, I’ve tried that. My new goal is to mark those with the old business name as closed. I’m crowdsourcing with like minded individuals at Google+ to report pages and issues we need fixed en masse.
Our only hope at this point that if one page has 300 complaints, Facebook might respond. This is incredibly frustrating as a small business to see 45 or 50 likes go to a page you have no control over that doesn’t allow your company to get your message out and connect with your fans and the people that seeked you out to ‘like’ you.
Hi Charles, I think you can’t merge them because you are not the admin of them. You must be the admin of both in order to merge pages. I’m happy to help, where would you like me to report my complaint?
I just need those reported as duplicates of the correct page. It appears people created those pages with check in’s and the like, and since I’m not in charge of those pages I can’t get them to go away.
I need them to be merged but Facebook thinks they must be different businesses, which is odd because this is in a town of 400 people. There are only two businesses, and the other restaurant has a profile that is a person, and not even a proper business page.
Hi Charles,
It seems that the first link of the incorrect bar you listed no longer exists. The second link I reported as a duplicate of the correct page. The third link it asked me if I know the owner and I input your email address that you used to enter your comment on this blog and it said it would send you an email to claim the page. I hope that helps. Let me know if they do. That would at least get rid of 2 out of 3. Cheers.
Thank you for your help. I took some time to get them to merge and I had to claim copyright infringement (a stretch) but it got them killed off.
Thank you for your help!
Hi Charles, I’m so happy to hear that you had success!! Thanks for sharing and closing the loop with us.
This could be a huge help for us. Our company still has a lingering ‘personal’ profile from years ago with about 1,500 friends. We created a proper page several months ago that now has about 500 fans on it — obviously not all of our friends liked our new page. We’ve left the profile abandoned and focused our efforts on the new Page.
However, would it be possible to:
1. Convert our old profile into a page;
2. Then merge that page with our current page?
I know that it would merge the smaller page into the larger one, but would this method leave me with no content? I’m trying to weigh jumping from 500 to 2,000 fans against losing several months’ worth of photos and posts. Any suggestions?
Hi Ted, yes you can convert a personal profile to a page. But you can only merge the two pages if they have the same name. You must also be an admin of both pages. Otherwise it won’t let you.
Hi, I have recently merged our company’s PLACE page with our main PAGE, it worked fine. The only problem is that now it considers our main page to be a “place” page. This is causing a problem with the searches because we no longer have a plain “page” and I don’t see any way to change the designation from a “place” page to a regular “page”. I checked Walmart and Nike and both of their Main pages with the most likes are considered just “pages”, not “place pages” and they have the check ins and all that on their main page. They do have separate place pages also, which are in the “place” category. Our main page is in the place category and we have no pages in the “page” category. Its a semantic thing but it means we dont appear when someone searches for a “page”. Can anyone help with this? Walmart has it figured it out.
Hi Zmo – it’s under Basic Information. If you have the new Timeline – click on where it says Place (above About but below the profile photo), then on About, click Edit. You’ll be brought to the admin page and on the left you should be on Basic information. The option is the top one (Category). Hope that helps. ~ Tracy
Hi Tracy – I merged our Place page with our main page and created this page.. http://www.facebook.com/iolapinc. There are also 2 community pages (http://www.facebook.com/pages/iOLAP/115909758470048?ref=ts and http://www.facebook.com/pages/iOLAP-Inc/124486214337474?ref=ts) that I cannot get rid of or merge with my place/page. My page does not show up under searches because they don’t display places there, only pages. I’ve converted to timeline and done what you suggested to Zmo. I have already changed the category to company and this hasn’t done anything for the search results.
Can you help me make my place a page, and how do I eliminate the comm page? My Marketing consultants don’t know what to do at this point and I have searched everywhere on Facebook, reported duplicated pages and tried to report two bugs.
Hi – So the one community page will not merge because it’s not called iOLAP, Inc. it’s just called iOLAP. The other page should merge if you own them both because it seems to have the same name. Unfortunately, you should have merged the main page with the place page and not the other way around. As a result you kept the Place page instead of the fan (company) page and that’s why you are stuck now. With only 23 likes, I would just start over at this point. Because there is no way to go back and no way to change your place page to a company page. You can try contacting Facebook….but I honestly think it would be better to start over with so few likes at this point. Sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.
I have about 7 other pages. among 7, 4 pages consist of same name. I want to authenticate all pages. HOW CAN I AUTHENTICATE THE PAGE… The JOLT FORM is not working. Pls show me any other & easy way… Plus I want to Merge that 4 same name pages, but in Resources the Option of Merge Duplicate Pages dont come… Why ???
Hi Shruti – hard for me to say without knowing the pages. They have to have the exact name otherwise the merge duplicate pages option won’t display. you have to be the owner of all of the pages too. If you’re not the owner of all of the two (or more) pages you want to merge, it won’t let you. Hope that helps.
that was helpful.
Thank you
Hi, i have a problem. I had 3 personal profiles which i migrated to fanpage. When i did the migration, i wanted to put them the same name in order to merge them to an only fanpage. But it didn’t let me do it. I had to named them the same it where named.
So now i have 3 fanpages:
VIA UNO Italia https://www.facebook.com/viaunoitalia
VIA UNO España https://www.facebook.com/viaunomadrid
VIA UNO Portugal https://www.facebook.com/viaunoportugal
I want to merge them to this fanpage VIA UNO, Europe https://www.facebook.com/viaunoeurope
But i can’t. Please help me. I own all of them. As i could not named them the same when i did the migration, now i cannot merge them. Please do you have a solution??
Thanks a lot
Hi Mariela, if you change the name of the page to be the same (not the username) but literally the name of the page, you should get the option to merge. For example:
Instead of being VIA UNO Italia with the username of fb.com/viaunoitalia, change it to VIA UNO and then do the same for VIA UNO España and change to VIA UNO and see if you get the option to merge. Let me know what happens.
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the tips. I have a personal page and a fan page that I want to merge. If I convert the personal page to a fan page, can I then merge the existing fan page with the new fan page?
Hi Kay, I haven’t tried it yet, but in theory, as long as they are named the same, according to Facebook, it should work. For example, when you convert your personal page to your fan page, make sure it has the same title as your fan page. If your fan page is called Kay Doe. Then when you convert your personal page to fan page make sure that the name is Kay Doe, then you should get the merge option then. Let me know how you make out.
It worked!
Hi Tracy,
I need to merge two pages- one has been up and runnning for some time, the other needed to be created to claim the URL. I just created the second page about an hour ago and don’t yet see the “Merge duplicate pages” option. Both pages are local businesses with the same exact name. Do you know if there is a time lapse before the “Merge duplicate pages” option becomes available?
Hi Kelly, there shouldn’t be a lag time. Can you give me the links to the 2 pages?
http://www.facebook.com/JohnVenaProduce
http://www.facebook.com/JohnVenaInc
If you create the page, are you automatically considered an admin or do you have to take any further steps?
You are automatically considered an Admin when you create the page. Why do you have two pages? You should just delete the second page since that has only 1 like. I wouldn’t bother with merging it.
I have 2 pages that I want to merge but the names are not similar enough so it doesn’t give me the option to merge them. It wont let me change the name because they both have over 100 likes. Any advice?
I have two pages that I want to merge – a place page and a regular page. The two pages have the same name, but when I go to the resources page, it is not giving me the option to merge them. I am an administrator for both pages and they both have the same address listed. Can you think of any reason Facebook isn’t letting me merge them?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Sweet-Tooth/119746264776322
http://www.facebook.com/TheSweetToothDR
Hi Christine, have you found out the solution to that problem yet. I have exactly the same thing happening for me. I have one place page and one actual page and they have EXACTLY the same names but I can’t see the option to merge them. Facebook says in their help guide that both pages have to have exactly the same address so you can try that. Let me know if you have found any solution anywhere else please. Thank You
My pages are :
https://www.facebook.com/pacinos and
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pacinos-Dublin/176547572387718
Hi Tracy,
I wonder if you could solve this mystery for me. I have two Facebook pages for one local business client.
This one was originally a personal profile that someone setup, probably before FB pages: https://www.facebook.com/roco.dance
They also have a FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Roco-Dance-Fitness/203683530114
We realized that we couldn’t keep going w/ some people “friending” us and some people “liking” us. I assumed that I would have to delete one of the accounts. First, I converted the personal profile into a page, since it had more friends than we had fans.
I was all set to delete the first official page, when I saw the “merge pages” option in the admin settings.
Here’s the crazy part: I clicked on that link just to see the option but then clicked “cancel”, b/c I wanted to learn more about merging pages before I went ahead with it. When I went back to do it again, it was GONE.
So, I’ve found a bunch of articles about merging duplicate pages, but none about what to do if the merge option suddenly disappears.
I realize that the pages have slightly different names, but that was the case when I originally saw the ‘merge’ option.
I really don’t want to delete a page with over 600 fans now that I know there is a merge option, but I can’t access it. If you could help in any way, I would appreciate it sooo much!
Thank you!
Hi Melissa,
It’s possible that either a) you need to clear your cache, or b) the names of these two pages HAS TO BE the same. So if the name is Roco Dance & Fitness then make sure both of them say that. THe name is different than the Username. See my other related post on clarifying this. http://socialstrand.com/2012/03/29/merging-multiple-facebook-pages-clarified-username-vs-name/
good luck! Let me know how you make out.
Best
Tracy
Thanks for the quick reply, Tracy!
I cleared my cache, which didn’t seem to help. BUT, I realized that I was logged in as an admin from my personal account – which isn’t the original admin account. On a whim, I decide to log out and log back in using the company’s admin account. Lo and behold, the “merge pages” option appeared again!
SO happy!
It didn’t seem to matter that the names were slightly different, interestingly enough.
Anyway, I’m all merged now! So grateful not to have to worry about two different pages. If anyone else mentions not being able to see the ‘merge pages’ option, this could be the answer – make sure you’re logged in with the main admin account!
So glad to hear that Melissa! yay! Thanks for coming back and posted your success!
Hey all,
Just wondering if anyone knows when the pages are merged do you need to select a new username for this page or does it carry the username over? For instance..www.facebook.com/bobvsted will merge against http://www.facebook.com/bobsvsteds will the first one override the second username?
Hey Scott, when you merge it asks you to log into the page you want to keep. When you click on the merge option from that page, all other pages that you merge with that page will be lost. So, for example, page A you want to keep, but you want to merge with page B. you log into A,select the merge option and merge it with page B. Page A is what is kept – including the username. Make sense? Thx, Tracy
Hi!
I have one page http://www.facebook.com/cinemantrix and a place page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cinemantrix/329411830464239 that I’m trying to merge. The names are the same and I get the link Merge duplicate pages. And I can click on it and confirm that I want to merge the place page into the page. But then nothing happens. I don’t get a confirmation that two pages have been merged. I’ve also waited a few days to see if they would eventually be merge. But nothing happens. Is this a bug?
Hi Hans, since only 1 person likes the place page I would just delete that. I don’t think it’s a bug, and I don’t know of any bugs, but there may be limitations and maybe it needs to have 25 likes first. Regardless, with 1 like, I would delete it. Hope that helps.