We've had news articles sharing to facebook correctly for a long time but as of last weekend we are starting to see the wrong og:image when shared to facebook. Using the debugger tool, the first time it is fetched I get a warning "image too small" which is probably why it defaults to another image. But the image in question is not too small. Could this be some issue with headers of my images in Amazon Bucket maybe? Cannot pin point the problem yet.
Pressing scrape again 2 times then I get the correct og:image
As an attempt to fix this I have added og:image:width and og:image:height but so far to no avail.
Debugger url: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maltatoday.com.mt%2Fnews%2Fworld%2F79568%2Fsicily_firefighters_caused_fires_for_cash
Adding Height & Width is NOT enough for everyone.
I've done the same for my websites and it didn't fixed it. It always needed a second Scraping, and then it will re-fetch the correct image.
Even after adding all of the meta OG tags didn't improve the situation.
I've noticed A LOT of other people experiencing this same issue, and adding height & width meta doesn't solve it.
In this case you'll need to add an iframe in your footer, and set it to be invisible and on page load to go to the facebook debugger, and scrape the url one more time for you automatically.
This is the solution according to Facebook. You'll need to scrape a second time (reference best practises under "Pre-caching images"). This is counter productive to be done manually, so just add the following code in your footer and you're done.
<iframe style="width:0; height:0; margin:0; padding:0; border:0; position:absolute;" src="https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></iframe>
A few notes to keep in mind:
This link leading to the debugger tool is valid in the time of writing this (August 2017). I've seen the link being different in the past, so if the link has changed in the future, just change the link in the iframe appropriately.
The part of the url right after "?q=" is the place where you place your link that you're posting to Facebook. I've used the_permalink() because it automatically checks the page's url and puts it in the link. If you'll like to do this for a single post, then just replace this with your actual link. This is for a WordPress php page. If this is not the correct code for your page, then change it into the language you're using.
I hope this helps everyone looking for an answer of this weird Facebook bug. It could have saved me ~6h of my life.
Cheers
Credit to user Dan for giving a clue on how to solve this.
Adding og:image:width and og:image:height as additional meta tags solved the issue for me. User nunsy_grey mentioned that this doesn't solve it for some user so worth looking at this alternative solution
Images aren't being shown when a person shares a URL to our site.
Using the debugger at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug and putting in the URL of http://www.muscleandfitness.com/videos/training/workout-101-overhead-pullover-video It shows that the meta tags are correct and an image is shown.
However share this link on Facebook.com and no image is shown.
Using Firebug I can see that the image scraper only returns a 1x1 pixel.
https://www.facebook.com/ajax/composerx/attachment/link/scraper/?scrape_url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.muscleandfitness.com%252Fvideos%252Ftraining%252Fworkout-101-overhead-pullover-video&composerurihash=2
composerurihash 2
scrape_url http%3A%2F%2Fwww.muscleandfitness.com%2Fvideos%2Ftraining%2Fworkout-101-overhead-pullover-video
Safe Image returns a 1x1 pixel: https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQBBILbPW7Po7Cds&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.muscleandfitness.com%2Fsites%2Fmuscleandfitness.com%2Ffiles%2FOverhead-Pullover_rotator_0.jpg
I need help in fixing this issue so that we can easily share URL's with the image.
Found that adding a trailing slash on the URL makes it work. It also seems to work better if the link comes after some words.
Example:
Wasn't working: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/news-and-features/features/everything-arnold-february-mf
but this worked: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/news-and-features/features/everything-arnold-february-mf/
I also get into a similar problem. My problem is because of the image name has a "space" in it. so it is not appear in the facebook debugger and also in sharing.
So i fixed the issue by replace space with hyphen("-") through coding part. After that i debug the url in facebook debugger, it appears. That means Facebook wont show the image name with "space". But there is no logical reason behind this. Anyway it will help someone.
For more information check this answer posted by Patrick D'appollonio. It helps me.
The Goal: There will be a Facebook [like] and [send] option underneath all our products and it will show the proper thumbnail image.
The problem: All the OG (open graph) tags are in place. According to Facebook's test, it works. I can see the preview image (as I should) on their test site. There, it works! In reality, this doesn't work at all. Outside of Facebook's test page.. it NEVER has worked.
Direct link to an example page showing the problem
The Open Graph tags are in place, including this:
`<meta property="og:image" content="http://img.loveculture.com/ProductImages/1044214_15_1.jpg" />`
Now it's randomly choosing images through out the page. I am beyond frustrated.
I'd like to rule out a few things.
Yes, the images are on a subdomain. Even using images on the same domain gives random thumbnails.
Yes, I've contacted Facebook about this and the issue was ignored. I'm losing hope on this issue.
UPDATE
Great.... Now it decided to use one of the pink arrows for the thumbnail image.
No, according to the Facebook debugger it doesn't work:
Open Graph Warnings That Should Be Fixed:
Tiny og:image: All the images referenced by og:image must be at least 200px in both dimensions. Please check all the images with tag og:image in the given url and ensure that it meets the minimum specification.
The file you are passing is 180x258px. Pass the full size image and it should be fine.
Ok, problem solved. Thank you all.
The issue was within the URL used within the HTML.
<div class='fb-like' data-send='true' data-width='450' data-href='http://www.loveculture.com/Item/ItemDetailView.aspx?StyleId=1043361' data-show-faces='true'></div>
It was a war between two legit urls.
http://www.loveculture.com/Item/ItemDetailView.aspx?StyleId=1043361
vs
http://www.loveculture.com/Item/ItemDetail.aspx?StyleId=1043361
I'm glad this has been resolved.
I've been at this for almost 3 days straight and now I can't even think clearly anymore.
All I'm trying to do is to get my featured image thumbnail to appear when I paste the link in Facebook.
I'm using the Wordpress Facebook Open Graph protocol plugin which generates all the correct og meta properties.
My thumbnail images are 240x200px which respects the minimum requirements and also respects the 3:1 ratio
I've made sure there's no trailing slash at the end of my post URLs
When I use the Facebook Object Debugger, the only warning is in regards to my locale, but that shouldn't affect it.
Facebook appears to be pulling the right image, at least the URL is correct, but the image appears as a blank square
I've gone through pretty much every thread I could find in forums, but all the information available is about using the correct og tags, which I believe I'm already doing.
Thank you very very much for any help, I'm desperate!! :)
You can troubleshoot the OpenGraph meta tags with the Debugger https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug - this can at least show if you're using the meta tags properly and if Facebook can 'read' the image.
I finally figured out that the root of my issue was the fact that I was using an addon domain (which is really a subdomain being redirected to the top level domain) and I read on eHow (of all places :) ) that Facebook has trouble pulling data from redirected domains.
Not sure if there was another way around it, but I simply ended up creating a seperate hosting account and everything is loading properly now.
one problem youre going to run into testing is that often the first time your page or post gets liked, fb keeps whatever img it finds in your meta tags or by searching your page. so, you'll keep changing your img meta tag and still it wont show the right pic. it's very anoying. One way to get around it is to change the slug of your post. now, it has a different url and to fb, it's a different page. The downside is you lose all the likes that go with your orig url. Not a problem with a new site.
I ended here googling another problem. Maybe this might help someone:
Please bear in mind that the facebook scraper works asynchronously and will need some time (during my tests around 10 minutes) to be able to display an image after seeing it for the first time.
For more information, here's a more thorough answer on a similar problem.
Indeed, as Andy Wibbels points out the FB debugger is a really handy tool.
I faced a similar issue with a server's og:image tag pointing to a secure subdomain which actually mirrors a CDN server,
<meta property="og:image" content="https://subdomain.pathToImage.jpg" />
<meta property="og:image_secure" content="https://subdomain.pathToImage.jpg" />
The FB debugging tool allows you to see the errors that FB encounters when trying to pull the image.
In my case the subdomain was not registered under the SSL certificate used by the HTTPS protocol. Hence FB was getting the following error,
Curl Error : SSL_CACERT SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate
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.