The purpose of this article is to help you learn:

  • How to use the Facebook Debugger to fix outdated share details on Facebook
  • How to use the Twitter Web Crawler to fix outdated share details on Twitter

 

Using the Facebook Debugger

Whenever you share a page of your site on social media sites like Facebook, it will display the page's title, description, and a site thumbnail.  However, this information may appear to be outdated if you've made a lot of changes to the page.  To preview and debug any issues with your social share details, you can use the Facebook Debugger tool.

  1. Click here to visit the Facebook Debugger page.  
  2. Enter your page's URL into the URL field.  
  3. Click the blue "Debug" button to the right of the URL field.
  4. Select one of the following options:
    1. Click "Fetch new information" for URLs that have never been shared on Facebook before.
    2. Click "Scrape again" for URLs that have been shared on Facebook previously.  
      • Please Note: You may need to click the "Scrape again" option multiple times before your social share information will be updated. 

If using the debugger does not fix the issues, please also check that you have added your personal Facebook Account username under the Social Settings section in your Facebook dashboard.

Another factor that may be impacting your share content is the size and resolution of your thumbnail.  Click here to make sure the image in your link share meets Facebook's criteria. 

 

Using the Twitter Web Crawler

Similar to sharing a page on Facebook, Twitter displays a "Card" whenever you share a URL on their platform.  Twitter Cards allow you to attach photos, videos, and other media to Tweets.   If you are having any issues with your Cards displaying the correct media, you can utilize the Twitter Web Crawler to reindex the card tag information for your page.  

  1. Add the Twitter Card metadata to a page.
  2. Tweet the URL to that page. 
  3. Refresh your browser to view the Twitter Card contents on your timeline.
  4. Make any necessary changes to the Cards metadata on the page.
  5. Use the same URL and run it through bit.ly, a free URL shortener.  Click here to visit bit.ly's homepage.
    1. Enter the URL into the "Shorten your link" field.
    2. Click the dark blue "Shorten" button.
    3. Click the light blue "Copy" button to copy the shortened URL.  
  6. Tweet the new bit.ly URL you just copied.  
  7. Refresh your browser to view the updates.  
    • Please Note: It can take up to 7 days for new page information to appear in Twitter shares.