In an effort to make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, Facebook has updated the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts. This new change will improve insights on the people who actively follow their Page and makes it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like audience lookalike.
Facebook is already filtering out likes and comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts from individual Page posts, so they are hoping this keep business results consistent with individual users.
The decrease in likes will begin today, March 12, and should continue over the next few weeks. Page admins should see a small dip in their likes, but in the long run will be more beneficial.
Remember, running Like Campaigns (to generate new fanpage likes) is still relatively cheap.