Many people want to learn more about website traffic and Facebook ads. One of the most sought-after questions is the importance of landing page views vs link clicks (Facebook Pixel Fires) and their difference.

Landing page views were created for this purpose. Facebook Ads Manager pulls the data from landing pages to track website traffic. To see your website from a bird’s eye view, you need to keep a close eye on landing page views and link clicks. What are they and how do you differentiate them? Let’s get started!

What are Landing Page Views in Facebook Ads?

With Landing Page Views, you get to know how many people actually loaded your site’s content after clicking a link that led there. This gives you a better analytical view than link clicks alone, which only looks at whether the following page/content loads or not. Using this tool, you can learn how many people are leaving your website before it even loads.

Landing Page views read when the user waits for the page to load after clicking the ad whereas link clicks only tell you about the clicks received on a certain link, whether or not the web content loaded afterwards.

What are Link Clicks in Facebook Ads?

Link Clicks are the clicks received on an ad regardless of whether the content of the website loaded afterwards. These links include likes, shares, comments, outbound links and more.

Facebook offers three types of metrics to measure link clicks. Which are:

• All Clicks
• Link Clicks
• Outbound Clicks

1. All Clicks

All clicks show you exactly what they mean: all clicks. This includes any kind of engagement on your ads which can go from likes and comments to clicking on a post to expand it to full screen.

P.S., if you’re looking for a tool that can help you find audiences that will engage with your ad posts, Ad Interest Pro allows you to comb through many of the different interests your buyers have!

2. Link Clicks

Link clicks are clicks by users that lead them to destinations off or on Facebook. This includes websites, other Facebook pages, YouTube videos or app stores.

3. Outbound Clicks

Outbound links include all of the links that lead people from Facebook to external sites. The destinations can have deep app links, websites, or in app stores. The only thing keeping them from being the perfect metric to track website traffic is that they don’t record landing page loads.

What is the Difference Between Landing Page Views and Link Clicks?

The difference between Link Clicks and Landing Page Views is night and day.

Link clicks track of all the engagement that’s going on with your ads while Landing Page Views measure how many people actually visit your site.

Link clicks can be a good analytical metric to keep an eye on when you are just starting out since it helps you track your ad’s performance. But as you climb up the ladder and gain more numbers, Landing Page Views becomes more important

The engagements Link Clicks count include:

• Clicks on the profile picture or business page profile
• Clicks to expand photos or media.
• Clicks on links
• Shares or Comments
• Post reactions such as likes
• Clicks that are your campaign objective, such as sharing a certain post or liking your Page

When it comes to landing page views vs link clicks, Facebook says, ” Landing page views let you know how many times people loaded your website, after clicking your ad. You can compare landing page views to link clicks to understand how many people clicked on your ad but left before your website loaded. To report on landing page views, you must have created a Facebook pixel.”

What Causes Discrepancies Between Landing Page Views and Link Clicks?

Ever wonder why not every click results in a landing page view? It’s because Facebook does not fire pixels after every click. Why does that not happen? Here are the reasons:

· Accidental Clicks

It happens to all of us. When scrolling through the timeline, you swipe a little too fast or accidentally tap the screen which hits a link. In such a case, the first thing you would do is go back and keep scrolling.

· Link takes too long to load

This issue is easily the most common. If the link does not load within 3 seconds, the person will leave. What’s worse is that 80% of the users will never try to load the link again – abandoning your link all together.

· Multiple clicks from one user

A person clicking on an ad several times will only count as one Landing Page view. This is because Facebook Pixel fires not per click, but per unique user. Hence, multiple clicks would not count as multiple Landing Page views.

· Clicks that don’t lead to your site

On several occasions, Facebook Link Click metrics can consider an action as a click which leads to a different destination from your landing page. This can cause more Link Clicks to be counted and less Landing Page views.

The reason these discrepancies between Landing Page views vs Link Clicks come from is that Facebook does not fire pixels after each click.

You can have a lot of positive impact on ROI by using Facebook Pixels. It helps tailoring campaigns, and retargeting pixels to specific links to more precisely target your audience.

How to Create a Custom Facebook Ads Report with Landing Page Views

You will need to use Facebook Pixel to create a proper report of Landing pages.

To create a custom Facebook Ads report for your Landing Page views:

1. Go to your Facebook Business Manager and then click on Ads Manager account
2. Select Campaign, then click on the top-right drop down which says “Columns”. Then, select “Performance.”
3. Click the “Breakdown” option and select “Placement & Device.”
4. Now head back to “Columns” and then select “Customize Columns” at the bottom
5. In the Customize Columns modal, enter “landing page views” to view all of the Landing Page view’s metrics. Here, you can select Cost, Unique cost, Unique, and Total, choose your preference, and then click “Apply”.

Once you’ve set up your custom Facebook Ads report, you can see how many people are actually clicking through and going to visit your website!

Final Thoughts

Both link clicks and landing page views are extremely important. However, when it comes to landing page views vs link clicks, landing page views are far more important in tracking traffic towards your landing page while link clicks are far more important when it comes to tracking engagement on the ad.