Social share updates don’t work

  • Resolved magicpowers

    (@magicpowers)


    6 years, 1 month ago

    ON several pages and posts in the Social Share tab I have inserted both the replacement image and the new description for Facebook and Twitter – which are supposed to show there whenever I post a link to these pages.

    On Facebook it works, except that it shows a LARGE image at the top and the desciption at the bottom. I’d like to have a standard format which is a small image on the left (about 1/4 of the row) and the descrption on the right. How can I achieve this?

    On Twitter this does not work at all – regardless of the page or post. IN spite of clearning the cache, my Twitter posts still show the wrong image and the wrong description.

    How can I fixed this?

    thanks

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • MariusG

    (@marius_codeinwp)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Facebook and Twitter are both caching URLs which have been previously posted. This means they will not check your URLs for changes until the cache expires, even though you may have made the correct changes in Yoast SEO.

    ​Facebook
    ​In order to force Facebook to clear the cache of a URL, please submit it to their Sharing Debugger and click the Scrape Again button several times (i.e. attached image). After you have done this, you can try sharing your URL on Facebook again and it should show the updated Open Graph tags.

    Regarding the large image which you are getting, that depends on the size and orientation of your chosen image. You can learn more about this here.

    ​Twitter
    The first step would be submitting your URL to Twitter’s Card Validator, to make sure that the Twitter tags are generated correctly. Next, you’d need to make sure that Twitter is not showing a cached version of your URL.

    ​Unfortunately, you cannot force Twitter to clear the cache of an URL and there is no way to determine when it will get updated. However, there is a workaround by adding query strings to your URLs. Thus, when adding them, Twitter will consider them new URLs and will scrape the page for tags instead of using the cached ones.
    ​
    For example, if you wanted to post on Twitter this URL https://yourwebsite.com/your-page/, but it’s already cached and it does not show the updates you have made, then you can post it using https://yourwebsite.com/your-page/?utm_source=twitter. You can add any other query string, we are using this one as it’s also a valid URL parameter for Google Analytics.

    Thread Starter magicpowers

    (@magicpowers)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Thanks for your reply.

    All this sounds VERY complicated and time consuming and is not included in your plugin instructions.

    It is an “enter – save – click ” solution which I chose precisely because I don’t want to spend my time and effort on complex verificatione etc.

    As I mentioned earlier, it is working on Facebook. Can you just tell me please where in the plugin settings I can change the format of the posting?

    So as per your plugin description of the social share function – it should work WITHOUT me doing any additional changes and verifications.

    Can you please advise.

    thanks

    Plugin Support Michael Tiña

    (@mikes41720)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    When you set a particular title, image, and meta description for social sharing with our Yoast SEO plugin, that is the expected output. However, we have to take into consideration the actual social sharing networks like Facebook and Twitter, who have their own data and cache if the link was previously shared. Because this is how it works, you will have to expect to either use the Facebook Sharing Debugger Tool for Facebook to get the updated cache data, or use another query string in the case of Twitter. We understand it is not ideal, but it is not because of the plugin itself, but because of how the social media platform processes the data tagged to the link.

    With regards to the proportions of the image and the description that you would like (which seems to be a thumbnail output), you can refer to this article for the image proportions you will need to add to get the desired outcome.

    Thread Starter magicpowers

    (@magicpowers)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Hi Michael

    Thanks for your reply.

    If that’s the case, why don’t you include these instructions clearly in your plugin? Unless it says that in addition to the plugin social settings, the social media platform settings must also be changed (what and how), I fully rely on the plugin.

    I think that’s a no-brainer, but rather a hidden shortcoming of the plugin.

    Even regarding the size of the image, the linked article actually says:

    You can add the og:image tag manually into the <head> section on every page of your website, or you can try out a plugin like Yoast SEO for WordPress, which handles the code and implementation for you.

    Precisely. I use your plugin to handle the code and whatever else needs to be changed FOR ME. With no further instructions – that’s the outcome I expect. Click and collect.

    If I wanted to do everything manually, first I would spend my time to find out what and how to change as at this point I don’t have a clue and no time to learn all this, and then once I have done that I wouldn’t bother to use your plugin. Makes sense?

    And also in the same aricle first it says:

    Images previews for shared links are scaled to fill a box of 476 pixels wide by 249 pixels tall. and it shows the outcome I am now getting on FB.

    and then it says:

    For most all image orientations — square, horizontal (landscape), and vertical (portrait) — the thumbnail will be scaled and cropped to fit a 158 x 158-pixel square. and it shows the outcome I WANT to achieve.

    So….which one is it?? Even this article is confusing as it doesn’t explain what to change and how to get the second outcome and not the first.

    Anyway – coming back to your plugin – please include these additional instructions. You are encouraging people to buy the pricey Premium version so that they can see the preview of how the link will show on social media – while unless they also fix what you are NOT saying needs to be fixed, the preview won’t change a thing.

    Thread Starter magicpowers

    (@magicpowers)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    thank you – the string query on the Twitter validator card did the trick.

    Plugin Support Md Mazedul Islam Khan

    (@mazedulislamkhan)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    We appreciate your provided feedback. While we don’t have all the instructions in our plugin help center, we do have an extensive knowledge base where you can find most of your answers.

    In regards to the image size, we understand the provided article is confusing and it wasn’t written by Yoast team. In order to achieve the style you want to see while sharing your website on Facebook, you’ll need to have the proper image size. To find more information about this, we recommend you to read the Facebook official best practice guide instead of any 3rd party guides.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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