Businesses Whose Facebook Following Grew 20% Picked Up About a Third More Linking Websites
Across 4,939 small business websites in Diib's data, those whose Facebook following grew 20% or more in a year added a median of 37 new linking websites, versus 28 for businesses whose following shrank. Even so, 42% of pages lost followers.
A growing Facebook audience won't move your Google rankings by itself, but businesses whose following grows tend to earn more links from other websites over the same year. If your follower count has been flat or falling, you're far from alone, and it's worth fixing.
A backlink is a link to your website from another website. Google treats links from other sites as one sign that a business is worth showing in search results. Facebook activity doesn’t change your Google rankings directly, but a page more people follow is a page more people see, share and mention.
Diib wanted to know whether businesses with a growing Facebook audience also earned more links over the same year.
What the data shows
Diib compared Facebook follower counts in October 2026 with the same week in October 2025, for 4,939 small business websites that had at least 50 followers a year ago and fewer than 200 linking websites. We then compared how many new websites linked to each one over that year:
- Following grew 20% or more (571 businesses): a median of 37 new linking websites.
- Following grew 5% to 20% (843): 33 new linking websites.
- Following was roughly flat, 0% to 5% (1,475): 30.
- Following shrank (2,050): 28.
The fast growers started with fewer links (a median of 26 versus 49 for the shrinking group), so this isn’t just bigger businesses pulling ahead. When we compared businesses that started with a similar number of links, the fast growers still added more in every group. The gap ranged from small (23 versus about 21 new links for the smallest sites) to large (52 versus 30 for sites that started with 25 to 74 links).
What this does and doesn’t tell you
This is aggregated data from businesses connected to Diib, and it shows a pattern, not proof that followers create links. A business that’s growing and getting attention offline may gain followers and links for the same reason. About 90% of businesses in every group gained at least one new linking website, so most businesses pick up some links either way. The difference is in how many.
The bigger surprise is how many pages are going backwards: 42% of the businesses in this group had fewer Facebook followers than a year ago.