Recently an issue occurred on the WordPress Support Forums (which I’ve started contributing to by helping out a few times a week – you should too!), where a user was was editing the Facebook Link description in an already published post, but it wasn’t being shared correctly. The Facebook Link Description was wrong, and this post will deal on how to fix it.
The description of links, images and other information is known as the Open Graph data, and that’s what it will be referred to in this post.
Using plugins like Yoast’s WordPress SEO or themes like Peadig, you can add Open Graph Data to any post or page, which appears in Facebook whenever you share the post or page there. This is a great way to encourage clickthroughs, especially if you boost the post to other markets.
Unfortunately, if you publish the post, or do any sort of editing of the description at a later date, you could find this new description won’t appear when people share Facebook updates. There could be two reasons why this is caused.
First and foremost it could be a caching issue on your site. If you have a caching plugin – like WP Super Cache & W3 Total Cache – you may need to flush the cache on your site.
More likely though there may be cached data at Facebook end. Facebook does cache Open Graph data, so it doesn’t access your site too much and bring down your site unnecessarily if your site becomes popular. Luckily it easy to clear the cache using the Facebook Object Debugger.
Simply go to the Facebook Object Debugger, and then fill in the URL you want to check the Open Graph Data and press “Fetch new scrape information”.
That will fetch new scrape information from your site, including your new Open Graph Data. You should be able to see how everything looks too, and debug anything which is incorrect.
Hopefully that helps solve an issue should you have it!
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Polite Disclaimer: I am welcome, open and willing for corrections to be shared in the comments (with corrections being added to posts and credited), and the comments field should be used to promote discussion and make this post better. I do not know everything and if anybody finds a better way to do something, then by all means please share it below.
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