Oh how this has caused so many Page owners angst. In two previous posts on merging duplicate pages, I wrote steps on how to merge duplicate pages and what the difference between Name and Username was on Facebook. However, despite the instructions, the posts are still garnering comments months later. This time the question that has come up is how do you authenticate a page?
I’ve done some scrubbing around the internet and here’s what I found out:
To get the ‘Merge duplicate page’ option you have to:
- Have theName (not vanity URL) be exactly the same, and note that you cannot change the name if you have more than 200 likes.
- Have the address be the same, which means it will populate a map and then you may need to return 24 hours later for it to take effect.
- Be an Admin (with job role as Manager),
- Have the voice be your personal profile. This is the thing that has been getting most people tripped up lately. You MUST be logged in under your personal account. When you navigate to the page check the VOICE (next to your name in upper right). If you the voice is set to the Page you will not see the Merge option. The voice must be set to your personal profile.
Note: You cannot merge more than 5 Pages. End of story. If you have more than 5 you are out of luck.
Don’t have the Merge option? Need to authenticate?
If you didn’t get the Merge option under the Resources section (Edit Page, Resources), then you may have come upon one of these links which asked you to authenticate your page before it merged. These links are applications by unknown third party developers.
- http://apps.facebook.com/authenticpage/?ref=ts or
- https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=160167234097982 (but this page has been deleted)
According to the Social Animal they say that if you haven’t authenticated your page, you should be able to see in the drop down menu from clicking on the gear icon, something that says “Protect Your Page”. (I have not been able to replicate this but it could be because I’ve already authenticated every Page I own or manage).
You have a Place Page that you did not create but still want to merge:
Now, what if you have a Place page that you didn’t create and would like to claim it? (Usually this happens because someone tried to check-in to your business when there was no existing Page so Facebook automatically created a “Place” page for you). If this is the case then you need to:
- Click the gear icon
and select “Is this your business” from the drop down menu. Fill out the relevant information until you are prompted with verifying you own that business.
- Then you can verify your connection to the business via email or uploading a document.
NOTE: Facebook claims that it will take them at least a week to verify you as an owner.
If all else fails, report the Page as a duplicate.
Lastly, the option you have if you still don’t have any luck is that you can try reporting the Page as a duplicate. (NOTE: you only see this option if you are not an Admin of the Page).
How to report a Page as duplicate of another:
- Copy the URL of the Page you want to keep.
- Navigate to the Page you want to report as a duplicate
- Click on the down arrow next to the gear icon and select “Report Page”, then choose Report Page as Duplicate and paste the URL in of the Page from step 1. (see images below).
I hope this is helpful. If not, you may find the comments from others in one of the other two posts (listed in the first paragraph above) helpful. If you’d like to hire me to solve your merge issue, please use the Contact Us page above. Good luck. Please let me know if you hit any other roadblocks in the comments below.
We have a business with five locations–there are existing pages for each of the locations that we did not set up. We need to have just one “official” page. I am thinking we’ll set up our official page and then claim and remove or merge the existing pages. Of course, claiming the pages is not going very smoothly. And I haven’t been able to validate the existing pages for the ones that I THINK we’ve claimed. Ideas?
Thanks for the clear writing…
thnx for your such greatly explained
We have our business set up as a friend page and then underneath it we set up a business page. How do i get rid fo the friend page without loosing the business page and also what’s the easiest way to inform the friends to go like you business?
With only 186 friends, I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble, but if you want to proceed, you should convert the profile to a Page and then merge it with the Place page. See the other links in this post for how to do all that. There are 2 other blogs that I wrote that walk you through the steps.
can i get the new link of this form ? (https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=160167234097982)
You Guys are saying that Facebook Page Merging limit is 5! But One Page is Merging 2K Likes weekly for past 2Years! How that become possible!
Manish – it’s the number of actual pages that can be merged, not the number if likes a page has.
Sory 4 my english
Hi,
I have merged 5 pages and I stil have 2 more to merge..
Facebook would not let me do it because I have reached the limit.
The 2 pages i could not merge with my main page, If i merge the 2 pages and have more fans then 5 pages I merged,
Will I be able to merge the page with the page with fewer fans?
Exp
Page nr 1. 5 pages merges. 10,000 likes
Page nr 2. 2 pages merged 11,000 likes
Can I merge page 2 with page 1. .?
Please help me with this…
Hi Claudiu – unfortunately, once you’ve reached the limit of 5 times, there is nothing that you can do except maybe report the page as a duplicate. Sorry.
Thank you
I have reported the pge…
Will see what happens!
My understanding is that it usually takes a few weeks for FB to respond so be patient. Good luck!
I tried to use the merge method but still ‘Not Authenticated’ message appears!