0

My brother in law has a simple website for his small business, and he has requested that I change the image for the embed when the site is shared on Facebook. Everything looked fine when I checked it with an Open Graph preview and sent a link via messenger, but the embed will not update on Facebook itself, even after using the sharing debugger.

  <meta property="og:title" content="Lennox's Lawncare & Property Maintenance">
  <meta property="og:description" content="Expert lawn care, gardening, and property maintenance services. Contact us to transform your outdoor space!">
  <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.lennoxlawncare.co.nz/assets/images/bizvehicle.webp">
  <meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
  <meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
  <meta property="og:image:alt" content="Business Vehicle with Lennox Lawncare signage">
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.lennoxlawncare.co.nz/about">
  <meta property="og:type" content="website">

Meta Sharing Debugger keeps trying to point to the logo image, so I tried changing the filename for that, and it instead just defaulted to a random image on the index webpage instead.

The website is hosted on Netlify.

As shown here, this is how the website should look, but Facebook does not seem to agree: Open Graph Validation

I changed the og:image url to point to the new image, then ran the sharing debugger for Facebook to clear the cache, which doesn't seem to have worked. I also tried clicking the 3 dots next to an already shared embed and clicking "refresh shared content", which also did not work, it still uses the logo.

I've tried the following solutions found on stackoverflow:

  1. Jquery to refresh it, but I get this error: Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://graph.facebook.com/. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). Status code: (null).
  2. fbrefresh URL parameter also did nothing.
  3. Also tried doing it using a PHP script, but my knowledge in that department is limited, so I am not sure why it didn't work. Console threw no errors.

1 Answer 1

0

The issue has resolved itself over time. After roughly 48 hours, Facebook automatically updated its cached data for the link.

If you're experiencing a similar problem, it might be worth waiting a bit for Facebook to refresh its cache.

For reference, here are the steps I took initially:

  1. Checked that my Open Graph tags were correctly set and used a Open Graph Validator tool.
  2. Used Facebook Sharing Debugger.
  3. Tried Refreshing Shared Content from the Facebook link menu.
  4. Changed Image Filename
  5. Explored Other Solutions on StackOverflow such as using JQuery to refresh the cache but I encountered a CORS error.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.