So you want to know about Facebook’s Verified Badges. Well, you’re in the right place.
This post will talk about how to apply for a badge (first up, since that’s why you clicked), what badges are, why they’re worth applying for, and (most importantly) what to expect when applying for your page’s.
For starters, how to apply for a verified badge.
Verification badges let people (and Facebook) know that a Page for a business or organisation is authentic.
To be eligible for a verification badge, you must be an admin of your business Page and your Page must:
- Be published
- Have a profile picture and cover photo
- Have posts
To verify your Page:
- Click Settings at the top of your Page.
- From General, click Page Verification.
- Click Verify this Page.
- Enter a publicly listed phone number for your business, your country and language.
- Click Call Me Now to allow Facebook to call you with a verification code.
- Enter the 4-digit verification code that the dubiously comprehensible human voice on the phone tells you, then click Continue. Facebook will take a few seconds before informing you of its decision.
If you prefer to verify your Page with a business document (example: phone bill, certificate of registration), follow the steps above and click Verify this Page with documents instead at the bottom left of the window that appears. Then, upload a picture of an official document showing your business’s name and address, pray to the Facebook gods, wait a week, and you’re golden (maybe).
We found Facebook’s phone verification to be a little finicky, so if you can, we recommend using the document option. After all, you’ve been painstakingly scanning and digitally cataloguing all of your official business documents and receipts, right…
After Facebook receives your verification code or business document, they say that they’ll review your info to confirm that it matches public records. Interestingly though, which public records Facebook decides to access aren’t listed, and wherever they are they appear to be mysteriously incomplete – for example, Facebook couldn’t find our very public business PABX number, even though it’s all over our public registration, Google My Business listing and our website. Facebook reckons they’ll send you a notification or email about your verification status within a few days, but for us it was a little over a week.
Keep in mind that you’re not required to verify your Page – however, doing so does bring your profile or page numerous benefits. From higher search rankings (Facebook’s search, not search engines) to (allegedly) boosted viewer respect, Facebook has done its part to incentivise deserving pages to get verified.
There are two kinds of verified badge on offer from Facebook: blue and grey. Each brings with it different eligibility requirements & benefits.
The blue verification badge
If you’re a celebrity, media company, or large brand, hello! Do you need some copywriting? Also, you can apply for the blue verification badge. See that little blue circle with a white tick inside it? That’s what a blue verification badge looks like.
Blue verification badges bring greatly boosted search rankings, access to the surprisingly-exclusive “verified” search restriction (unavailable to all other pages, even those with a grey verification badge), looser advertisement restrictions (unacknowledged by Facebook) and reasonably obvious audience respect. All in all, a very worthwhile digital asset to have.
Examples of this can be seen alongside the page title of Domino’s Australia Corporate, as well as that of Australia’s true prime minister Shannon Noll.
For those a little way from national-icon status, there’s the second, less visually appealing kind of verification badge:
The grey Verification badge.
For smaller businesses (or local organisations, local celebrities, official fan pages etc.), Facebook offers a grey verification badge. Something of a little brother to the blue badge, it appears as an identical circle with a white tick, only with a grey fill instead of blue.
The benefits of this badge are much less flashy – there’s no custom search restriction, you’re subjected to the same restrictions on your ads as any other page, and the badge just looks a lot less appealing when presented against its blue counterpart in search results. Fortunately, though, you will actually appear a lot more often in these search results, and, similar to the blue badge above, your viewers can be reasonably expected to view your page a little more favourably.
Accessible examples are seen in the below Domino’s Pizza franchise page – it isn’t the main corporate page; only a franchise, and so it receives the grey badge instead. Similarly, our friends at Perth real estate agency Mack Hall Real Estate also receive a grey badge due to their local focus. Great agents there, by the way.
So there we have it: how to get verified on Facebook.
For affordable social media blog-writing or even just general (free) advice, you might consider reaching out to Matthews Copywriting. Feel free to give our founder Peter Matthews a ring on 0450 049 022. Did you hear that Facebook? 0450 049 022.