With the Facebook Debugger, you can update your link preview and remove outdated images from the cache. Since the Facebook Debugger is a developer tool, it can do a lot more.
If you know how to use the tool correctly, it offers good assistance and can even be used for error analysis. Below we explain how to use the Facebook Debugger efficiently.
How a link post on Facebook should look like
Link posts are particularly common on Facebook. With a link post, you can draw attention to your blog posts, news articles or other website content as well as products from your online shop. Of course, the post should be attractively designed to direct the user to your website.
Images increase the interaction rate
Did you know that the importance of visual material is statistically proven? Including images in a link or post results in an 87 percent higher interaction rate. To encourage your users to click, your post should convince them with a suitable and high-quality preview image.
The titles of the articles, the teaser, the preview image, the image title, and the meta description should ideally be perfectly coordinated. The better these elements fit together, the greater the chances that users will show interest in clicking on your post and following you to your website or online store.
Facebook debugger for image repair
It is not uncommon for Facebook to use an old thumbnail when sharing a link. Sometimes there is no picture at all.
Why is that? If you share an unedited link, Facebook will
retrieve the data it has collected itself. It generates this from the buffer or cache, which may contain outdated or incorrect image data.
A debugger is a tool you can use to check the preview yourself. To do this, do the following:
1. Go to the Sharing Debugger on Facebook for Developers.
2. Paste your URL to be checked into the Sharing Debugger.
3. Click Troubleshoot to scrape the web address.
The debugger examines all related information. The Facebook tool also provides important information about existing shares and comments. You can also use this tool to display the last scraping time and any existing forwarding including target and source files.
This information can be very important, especially if a problem with the link preview is only noticed after posting. Based on the total shares, you can then estimate how many users have already seen the wrong preview of your content.
How do I get a proper link preview on Facebook?
For Facebook to be able to display the preview with a suitable image, title, and adequate description, it needs some information.
Facebook wants specific information about:
- URL
- picture
- meta description and
- type of medium
from you. These types of data are called Open Graph Tags (OG Tags).
If the OG tags are not well defined, Facebook uses the first few lines of text on the website – or even no data at all. It goes without saying that the result can sometimes look pretty wild.
You can define the OG information in CMS such as WordPress with certain plugins (for example Yoast, which you use for SEO) per page or post. Alternatively, you can define a standard image.
Checklist for a broken link preview
Notice an error in the preview when posting a link? There is no classic error message. But you should take a look at the typical sources of error.
Check out the following settings to troubleshoot potential errors:
- Did you make the post public? Make sure you haven’t password protected the post or made it private. Facebook can only read the publicly available information and generate the Open Graph definitions from it.
- Did you use the correct URL for the post? Make sure that you only use the actual URL for the post, without any attached parameters.
- Did you define the Open Graph information for your post correctly? Make sure you’ve assigned metadata and image information specific to your post or page. You should prefer an individual definition to a global definition.
- Did you clear the website cache after making a change?
- Have you shared the page before? If not, make sure that you read the page in the Facebook Debugger using the “Get new information” function.
- Is the thumbnail the right size? Make sure that the aspect ratio of your selected thumbnail is correct. Pictures that are too small sometimes lead to display problems. It is also possible that the link preview remains empty or is completely hidden if the image size is too small. The current minimum size is currently 200 x 200 pixels. Images in your link preview should ideally be 1200 x 630 pixels in a 1.91:1 format.
Conclusion: The Facebook Debugger should not be missing from your repertoire
An attractive preview helps to attract attention to your website content on social media platforms. Occasionally, when you post a link, Facebook creates its own messy mix of fake or old images and an ugly title. Often caching simply uses outdated information.
Only the so-called “debug” helps. With the Facebook Debugger, the Facebook developers provide you with an open tool that you can use to eliminate all these errors. This allows you to analyze the preview of your link and, if there are problems, adjust the image and the description according to your wishes.