I always find concrete examples help the most... so here's an example URL:
http://www.humanreligions.info/humanism.html
The comments and like button work as expected. But if I user has clicked on this link to get the the page, or if they click on one of the menu items and then happen to refresh the page, the browser URL is:
http://www.humanreligions.info/humanism.html#Organisations
and none of the likes and comments from the base page show up. Because of the anchor, FB is treating it as a whole new page, which is not what an anchor means nor what I want it to do.
Questions/answers on this (I've been searching for a while, sure that others must have stumbled across this simple bug!) all seem to be where people do want the # to mean something special. This was asked a year ago here facebook comment count url with an '#' anchor tag? but there are no answers,
Here are relevent code snippets from the page:
LIKE BUTTON CODE (simplified):
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.humanreligions.info%2Fhumanism.html"></iframe>
COMMENTS:
<div id="fb-root"></div><fb:comments href="http://www.humanreligions.info/humanism.html"></fb:comments>
MISC:
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.humanreligions.info/humanism.html">
What else does it require to make FB treat one page as one page regardless of (irrevelent) internal anchors?
I know that I'm really late with this, but you can add a the data-href attribute to the facebook like button when you are using the XMLNS version of it, which I can see is being used from the comments section. So for your example you would put:
<fb:like layout="box_count" action="like" show_faces="true" share="true" data-href="http://www.humanreligions.info/humanism.html"></fb:like>
I'm having troubles with my meta tags with Open Graph. It seems as though Facebook is caching old values of my meta tags. Old values for Attributes og:title and og:url are still used, even though I have changed them already.
I ran Lint on a page in my site, and this appeared:
Notice that there are two values for og:title and og:url, and the last one prevailed. However, The last two entries are the OLD entries that I used for this site. I am now currently using these meta tags (you can verify if you view the source of the HTML):
<meta property="og:title" content="Smart og rummelig pusletaske fra Petit Amour med god plads til alt – værdi 1.099 kr – køb nu kun 599 kr "/>
<meta property="og:description" content="Pinq.dk - Det gode liv for det halve"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="product"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://pinq.dk/tilbud/landsdaekkende/lissy/"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://pinq.dk/wp-content/themes/pinq/images/logo-top.png"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Pinq" />
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="161840830532004" />
Why is Facebook caching og:title and og:url? Is anyone experiencing the same issue?
Go to http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Enter the URL following by fbrefresh=CAN_BE_ANYTHING
Examples:
http://www.example.com?fbrefresh=CAN_BE_ANYTHING
http://www.example.com?postid=1234&fbrefresh=CAN_BE_ANYTHING
OR visit:
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=http://www.example.com/?p=3568&fbrefresh=89127348912
I was having the same issue last night, and I got this solution from some website.
Facebook saves your cache thumbnail. It won't refresh even if you delete the thumnail/image from your server. But Facebook allows you to refresh by using fbrefresh.
The most voted question is quite outdated:
These are the only 2 options that should be used as of November 2014:
For non developers
Use the FB Debugger: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object
Paste the url you want to recache. (Make sure you use the same url included on your og:url tag)
Click the Fetch Scrape information again Button
For Developers
Make a GET call programmatically to this URL: https://graph.facebook.com/?id=[YOUR_URL_HERE]&scrape=true (see: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games_payments/takingpayments#scraping)
Make sure the og:url tag included on the head on that page matches with the one you are passing.
you can even parse the json response to get the number of shares of that URL.
Additional Info About Updating Images
If the og:image URL remains the same but the image has actually changed it won't be updated nor recached by Facebook scrapers even doing the above. (even passing a ?last_update=[TIMESTAMP] at the end of the image url didn't work for me).
The only effective workaround for me has been to assign a new name to the image.
Note regarding image or video updates on previously posted posts:
When you call the debugger to scrap changes on your og:tags of your page, all previous Facebook shares of that URL will still show the old image/video. There is no way to update all previous posts and it's this way by design for security reasons. Otherwise, someone would be able to pretend that a user shared something that he/she actually didn't.
If you have many pages and don't want to refresh them manually - you can do it automatically.
Lets say you have user profile page with photo:
$url = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/'.$user_profile;
$user_photo = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/'.$user_photo;
<meta property="og:url" content="<?php echo $url; ?>"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo $user_photo; ?>"
Just add this to your page:
// with jQuery
$.post(
'https://graph.facebook.com',
{
id: '<?php echo $url; ?>',
scrape: true
},
function(response){
console.log(response);
}
);
// with "vanilla" javascript
var fbxhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
fbxhr.open("POST", "https://graph.facebook.com", true);
fbxhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
fbxhr.send("id=<?php echo $url; ?>&scrape=true");
This will refresh Facebook cache. If you use the jQuery solution, have a look at "response" in console.log - you will find there "updated_time" field and other useful information.
The OG thumbnail does not seem to refresh even if passing the fbrefresh variable.
To update this without waiting for automated clearing you'll need to change the filename of the thumbnail associated meta tag value and refresh.
Basically, the answer is patience ;)
I checked the Linter this morning, and og:title and og:url displays correctly, without the redundant values. I guess FaceBook automatically clears its cache at some specific interval. I just have to wait.
I had the same issues using og:image, several attempts to rename the file or clear FB cache did not work either via the facebook debugger or testing via an actual account.
The new facebook guidelines state the image size should be 1200 x 630 or having that aspect ratio, this seems to be wrong, the only thing that worked for me was using an image with square dimensions.
Edit* Afew hours I went back to use 1200 x 630 and it magically worked, it was magical.
I also renamed the files to f*^*kfacebook.jpg, not sure it helped but it felt good.
Yes, facebook automatically clears the cache every 24 hours: Actually facebook scrapes the pages and updates the cache every 24 hours https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/#scraperinfo.
Ooook, finally it helped (I use IP.Board). What I had to do was:
Change url of og:image on my website (General configuration).
Try this method with ?fbrefresh=1154464gd56
Thanks to author for this thread!
EDIT: What is more you need to remember about image requirements. For now (january 2013) it's:
- at least 200 px in both directions
- maximum ratio 3:1
Visit the FB page https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/
Enter your domain.
Click the button "Fetch new scrape information"
Done
I'm sorry folks but the correct answer is:
There is no fool proof way to update the open graph og:image url with immediate result. It is cached until fb updates (reportedly every 24 hours)
Here are things that have been reported to work by others but I have had ZERO success with any of them.
Choosing "Fetch new scrape information"
Changing the actual image filename and/or deleting the original
Adding a query string to the image url by appending a PHP TIMESTAMP or ?anything
Adding the "...yoursite.com/?fbrefresh=anything" query string to the debugger fetch url
Choosing the graph API link at the bottom of the og dev page
Choosing to see exactly what the scraper sees - does not appear to request real time un-cached scrape data, it still shows the cached image url even if the file no longer exists
Inspecting your code is always a spot on way to confirm it is not an issue with browser cache or some caching service. If the meta information is up to date in your code and you've tried all of the above (unless another suggestion comes to fruition), the correct answer is you can do nothing but wait.
We just ran into this, as it turns out, we weren't linting the right url, since the real url had a query string (duh, different page as far as a bot is concerned).
http://example.com/
!==
http://example.com/?utm_campaign=foo
The linter will recache your page, you don't have to wait.
One thing to add, the url is case sensitive. Note that:
apps.facebook.com/HELLO
is different in the linter's eyes then
apps.facebook.com/hello
Be sure to use the exact site url that was entered in the developer settings for the app. The linter will return the properties otherwise but will not refresh the cache.
I've found out that if your image is 72dpi it will give you the image size error. Use 96dpi instead. Hope this helps.
Go to http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Paste in the url of the page and click debug. If your site is using url aliases make sure you are using the same url as Facebook
is using for the page you are sharing (example: in Drupal use the
node/* path instead of the alias if the page is shared via that
url).
Click in the "Share preview" part on "See this in the share dialog" link
Facebook Developer Documents says title property has exception:
Once 50 actions (likes, shares and comments) have been associated with
an object, you won't be able to update its title
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/opengraph/using-objects#update
Had a similar experience. Website link was showing a 404 in the preview that facebook generated. Turns out the og:url metadata was wrong. We had already fixed it a few days back but were still seeing a 404 on the preview. We used the tool at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ and that forced the refresh (didn't have to append any parameters by the way)
In our case, Facebook didn't refresh the cache after 24 hours but the tool helped force it.
It is a cache, ofc it refreshes, that's what cache is ment to do once in a while. So waiting will eventually work but sometimes you need to do that faster. Changing the filename works.
I was having this issue too. The scraper shows the right information, but the share url was still populated with old data.
The way I got around this was to use the feed method, instead of share, and then populate the data manually (which isn't exposed with the share method)
Something like this:
shareToFB = () => {
window.FB.ui({
method: 'feed',
link: `signup.yourdomain.com/?referrer=${this.props.subscriber.sid}`,
name: 'THIS WILL OVERRIDE OG:TITLE TAG',
description: 'THIS WILL OVERRIDE OG:DESCRIPTION TAG',
caption: 'THIS WILL OVERRIDE THE OG:URL TAG'
});
};
Really easy solve. Tested and working. You just need to generate a new url when you update your meta tags. It's as simple as adding a "&cacheBuster=1" to your url. If you change the meta tags, just increment the "&cacheBuster=2"
Orginal URL
www.example.com
URL when og meta tags are updated:
www.example.com?cacheBuster=1
URL when og meta tags are updated again:
www.example.com?cacheBuster=2
Facebook will treat each like a new url and get fresh meta data.
Years later and this is still a common problem, but its not always facebook's cache: It is very often human error (allow me to elaborate)
OG:TYPE effects your image scrape:
https://ogp.me/#type_article not the same as https://ogp.me/#type_website
Be aware that og:type=website will cause any /sub-pages/ of that url to become "canonical". This means you will have trouble getting your images to update using the scraper no matter what you do.
Consider this "assumption and common mistake"
-<meta property="og:type" content="website" /> => https://www.example.org (parent)
-<meta property="og:type" content="website" /> => https://www.example.org/sub-page/
-<meta property="og:type" content="website" /> => https://www.example.org/sub-page/child-2/
- Ergo: /sub-page/ and /child-2/ will inherit the og:image of the parent
Those are not "all websites", 1 is a website, the others are articles.
If you do that Facebook will think all of those are canonical and it will put the FIRST og:image into all of them. (try it, you'll see) - if you set the og:url to be your root or parent domain you've told facebook they are all canonical. (there is good reason for that, but its off topic)
Consider this solution (which is what most people "really want")
-<meta property="og:type" content="article" /> => https://www.example.org/sub-page/
-<meta property="og:type" content="article" /> => https://www.example.org/sub-page/child-2/
If you do that now Facebook will give you far far less problems with scraping your NEW images.
In closing, YES the cache busters, random vars, changing urls and suggestions here can work, but they will seem like "intermittent voodoo" if the og:type is not specified correctly.
PS: remember that a CDN or serverside cache will serve to Facebook's scraper even if you "think" you can see the most recent version. (I wont spend any time on this other than to point out it will waste colossal amounts of your time if not double checked.)
I had a different, but similar problem with Facebook recently, and found that the scraper/debug page mentioned, simply does not appear to read any page in its entirety. My meta properties for Open Graph were further down in the head section, and the scraper would constantly inform me that the image specification was not correct, and would use a cached version regardless. I moved the Open Graph tags further up in the code, near the very top of the page, and then everything worked perfectly, every time.
I had the same problem with fb and twitter caching old meta data, this threw me for a curve as I continued to edit the code but no change. I finally discovered they had caching my first request. Adding a query string to the url worked for twitter but not fb(for me).
I implemented facebook comments across a legacy, custom CMS. I used the XFBML implementation. Everything works as expected except when clicking the links back to the article page from a commenter's facebook feed the comment box does not show any comments. The link is of this form:
{Article URL}?fb_comment_id={comment_id_string}
And if I remove the comment parameter and only go to the article url the comment box renders correctly with the comment and all other comments on the article. So, it's some issue with the fb_comment_id parameter. One weird thing about how I had to implement the comments is, because of how the routing on the site works, I could not use server side code to set the the URL parameter in the <fb:comments> object. So I had to use this jquery code in the <head>:
<script>
// assign current page to comments url
$(document).ready(function() {
$('fb\\:comments').each(function(){
$(this).attr('href', window.location);
});
});
</script>
And used this for the actual <fb:comments> code:
<fb:comments href="{site's root URL}" num_posts="8" width="570"></fb:comments>
So, I figure doing this client side may be causing the issue. Not doing this server side is a hard constraint though, and everything else works so I'm hopeful there may be some way to make this work. If making the comment link work correctly is impossible, a reasonable hack would be to rewrite the link in the facebook feed so that it just points to the article url without adding the comment parameter. Any suggestions? Thanks!
NOTE: I've also tried using the html5 comments implementation and there is the same issue.;
Once facebook has rendered the iframe based upon your fb:comments tag, does it have the correct url? I am thinking it does not. You may have to call FB.XFBML.parse() after you inject the complete
I am trying to use the facebook comments plugins in my website.
so I added the plugin in every article.
but the comments are the same, for example if i wrote a comment in article a,
it appears also in article b.
did anyone know how to work with that?
If you are using ASP.Net then you could always set the href attribute of the fb:comments tag to be the same url as that of your page. This ensures unique comment maintainability across different pages (articles). I have included the implementation that I used on www.myPUBGUIDE.com below:
<fb:comments href="<%=HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri %>" num_posts="10" width="500"></fb:comments>
you set the xid unique for each article; all comments with the same xid will appear together
When someone posts a link on facebook, a script usually scans that link for any images, and displays a quick thumbnail next to the post. For certain URLs though (including mine), FB doesn't seem to pick up anything, despite their being a number of images on that page.
I read up that FB prefers the "image_src" rel tag for the image the user wishes to specify, but this does not generate that thumbnail either for my site.
My url goes directly to the DNS, and is not forwarded, so I don't imagine that could be the problem either.
Does anyone have an idea as to why FB can't generate any thumbnails from my site?
The easiest way is just a link tag:
<link rel="image_src" href="http://stackoverflow.com/images/logo.gif" />
But there are some other things you can add to your site to make it more Social media friendly:
Open Graph Tags
Open Graph tags are tags that you add to the <head> of your website to describe the entity your page represents, whether it is a band, restaurant, blog, or something else.
An Open Graph tag looks like this:
<meta property="og:tag name" content="tag value"/>
If you use Open Graph tags, the following six are required:
og:title - The title of the entity.
og:type - The type of entity. You must select a type from the list of Open Graph types.
og:image - The URL to an image that represents the entity. Images must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Square images work best, but you are allowed to use images up to three times as wide as they are tall.
og:url - The canonical, permanent URL of the page representing the entity. When you use Open Graph tags, the Like button posts a link to the og:url instead of the URL in the Like button code.
og:site_name - A human-readable name for your site, e.g., "IMDb".
fb:admins or fb:app_id - A comma-separated list of either the Facebook IDs of page administrators or a Facebook Platform application ID. At a minimum, include only your own Facebook ID.
More information on Open Graph tags and details on Administering your page can be found on the Open Graph protocol documentation.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
I know this question is old, but I recently dealt with the exact same problem and went round and round on it for a couple weeks. Multiple searches on Google turned up a lot of useful information, but most of it was focused on Open Graph tags, which I wasn't interested in using. Turns out my site had multiple issues, but here are some of the basics.
As EightyEight said, make sure your HTML is valid - and the same goes for your javascript and server-side code (PHP, ASP, etc.). I had a small PHP error in a piece of code that was executing as a separate call to the server from the main page. Due to a number of bizarre coincidences, that code was generating a 500 error - but ONLY for IE6 and strict parsing engines like the W3C validator and the Facebook page crawler. The problem didn't appear in modern browsers (Chrome 4, FF 3.5, IE 8, etc) so I didn't see it right away, but older/stricter clients were showing the 500 every time and that was the main reason FB wasn't crawling our page (when everything else seemed to be correct).
Regarding Randy's response, he's correct that Facebook will keep an old cached copy of your page long after you've updated it. FB claims it's only held for 24 hours, but I experienced much longer times than that. FORTUNATELY, FB has released their "URL Linter" tool that will show you a preview of how your page will appear when being shared on FB, and it will force FB to instantly update its cache of your page. This was a lifesaving tool. You can find it at http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
Regarding the URL Linter tool, be aware that each variation of a URL is cached separately on Facebook, so "www.example.com" is not the same as "example.com". Also, unique capitalization is stored as well, so "ExampleOne.com" is not the same as "exampleone.com". (This led to a lot of confusion between my client and myself when it appeared to me that the cache had been updated just fine and the client claimed they weren't seeing the updates. Turns out I was looking at exampleone.com and had used Linter to update the cache, but they were looking at exampleOne.com which I hadn't submitted to Linter. As a result, I ended up submitting quite a few variations of the URL to Linter just to cover the bases.)
WyrdNEXUS's advice to use the image_src link tag is spot-on. This allows you to be sure that FB is scraping the best possible image for your page. There are some varying guidelines out there about what specs the image file should have, but I've successfully used a 128px square image and have seen a 130x97 image make it through as well. Here is Facebook's official documentation from http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/:
Images must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Square images work best, but you are allowed to use images up to three times as wide as they are tall.
Obviously, FB will resize a large image for you, but you'll almost always get better results if you resize it yourself beforehand.
Regarding Mike Cooper's link to the eHow article, avoid using step #1 in that article. It was valid advice when the article was written and when Mike posted the link, but it's now better to use the URL Linter tool for previewing how your page will appear when being shared. By using Linter, you won't cause FB to cache a (potentially) bad copy of the page before you get a chance to tweak it.
Use the facebook lintter available here. http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
This will check your link and re fetch any images. this also clears any old cache.
Or try this - https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
To change Title, Description and Image, we need to add some meta tags under head tag.
STEP 1 :
Add meta tags under head tag
<html>
<head>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.test.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.test.com/img/fb-logo.png" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Prepaid Phone Cards, low rates for International calls with Lucky Prepay" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Cheap prepaid Phone Cards. Low rates for international calls anywhere in the world." />
NEXT STEP :
Click on below link
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Add your URL in text box (e.g http://www.test.com/) where you mentioned the tags. Click on DEBUG button.
Its done.
You can verify here https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.test.com/
In above url, u = your website link
ENJOY !!!!
try this: http://www.ehow.com/how_4938148_thumbnail-show-up-facebook-share.html
Is the site's HTML valid? Run it through w3c validation service.
Actually, if you've already tried linking that page on Facebook BEFORE adding the "image_src" link, Facebook will keep using the old cached copy and not even see your changes. Try modifying the URL by removing or adding the 'www', or duplicate your page to test it.
I've noticed that Facebook does not take thumbnails from websites if they start with https, is that maybe your case?
had the same problem and figured out that my head closing tag was in the wrong place
Old question but recently I seemed to be running into same issue with thumbnail images from my link not showing in status updates on Facebook. I post for many clients and this is relatively new.
FB doesn't seem to like long URLs anymore — if you use a URL shortener such as goo.gl or bitly.com, the thumbnail from your link/post will appear in your FB update.
Try using something like this:
<link rel="image_src" href="http://yoursite.com/graphics/yourimage.jpg" /link>`
Seems to work just fine on Firefox as long as you use a full path to your image.
Trouble is it get vertically offset downward for some reason. Image is 200 x 200 as recommended somewhere I read.
If you used any plugin for seo then Check 1st your seo plugin settings.Then find out Noindex setting if Enable Media for Noindex then disable it.