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I’m trying to get the Facebook link sharing meta tags to work for my Blogger site, and though I got link previews mostly working (images, title, custom description, etc.), I cannot get the author link to display.
Here’s a screencap showing what I’m referring to:
Yet here’s a link preview for my blog, as seen using the FB Sharing Debugger:
The Facebook instructions say only to check that “Who Can Follow Me” is set to “Public” in my profile settings, and to add <meta content='<FB_profile_URL>' property='article:author'/> in my template’s <head>. I’ve done that and debugged my meta tags in the Debugger so that only a couple minor and unrelated errors/warnings remain (one about a missing fb:app_id property (I don’t have a FB app) and sometimes a warning about a post image being ignored because it’s smaller than 200×200).
Here are all my social media meta tags in my template (including tags for Twitter and Google+ in case someone points out any conflicting tags or properties I may not know about):
<!-- start social media meta tags -->
<!-- start Facebook/Open Graph meta tags -->
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/>
<meta content='https://www.facebook.com/joemcken' property='article:author'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='blog' property='og:type'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oXxCTyNh6gc/WY7QMBR_eNI/AAAAAAAAAl0/cGml_-lFF6wfpvr_gnVwuWBgAKN8Ok3awCLcBGAs/s1600/Preliator_favicon_large.png' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>
<!-- end Facebook/Open Graph meta tags -->
<!-- start Twitter card meta tags (source: https://twittercommunity.com/t/blogger-twitter-card-image-display-problem-solution/82315) -->
<meta content='summary' name='twitter:card'/>
<meta content='@joemcken' name='twitter:site'/>
<meta content='@joemcken' name='twitter:creator'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.homepageUrl' name='twitter:domain'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='twitter:title'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.homepageUrl' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='twitter:title'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' name='twitter:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oXxCTyNh6gc/WY7QMBR_eNI/AAAAAAAAAl0/cGml_-lFF6wfpvr_gnVwuWBgAKN8Ok3awCLcBGAs/s1600/Preliator_favicon_large.png' name='twitter:image'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='twitter:description'/>
</b:if>
<!-- end Twitter card meta tags -->
<!-- start Google+ meta tags -->
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "index"'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' itemprop='name'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' itemprop='url'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' itemprop='name'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.homepageUrl' itemprop='url'/>
</b:if>
<link href='https://plus.google.com/102494175517749861425' rel='author'/>
<link href='https://plus.google.com/102494175517749861425' rel='publisher'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' itemprop='description'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' itemprop='image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oXxCTyNh6gc/WY7QMBR_eNI/AAAAAAAAAl0/cGml_-lFF6wfpvr_gnVwuWBgAKN8Ok3awCLcBGAs/s1600/Preliator_favicon_large.png' itemprop='image'/>
</b:if>
<!-- end Google+ meta tags -->
<!-- end social media meta tags -->
https in the links to make them work.)
FIRST: I posted a notification that I was going to make a bunch of test posts, and when I shared the link for that post, the author tag displayed immediately.
• Sharing Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2F13-Tinkering-around-with-some-test-post.html
• Object Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2F13-Tinkering-around-with-some-test-post.html
SECOND: I created “Test post 2”, and the author tag displayed for that one as well. (Original post has been deleted, but the scrape information remains for now.)
• Sharing Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2Ftest-post.html
• Object Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2Ftest-post.html
THIRD: I then created “Test post 3”, which is identical to “Test post 2”, above, except for the slightly different title and permalink. Yet the author link never appeared for this one. The debug information, below, is also identical to “Test post 2”. (Original post has been deleted, but the scrape information remains for now.)
• Sharing Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2Ftest-post-3.html
• Object Debugger link: [https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2Ftest-post-3.html
UPDATE #3: I’ve tried everything I can think of. As it stands, maybe 1 link in 10 I post to Facebook will show the author tag, and it seems entirely random which do or don’t (though possibly they appear more often on links to shorter posts, or with shorter titles/URLs/meta descriptions … can’t confirm, though).
For instance, I posted this last night and the author link displays fine (screencap link):
[https:]//image.prntscr.com/image/uwNewssrRz_GD8-z5kuPBA.jpeg
The tag remains after rescraping:
[https:]//developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpreliator2.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F08%2F16-I-feel-Hals-pain-120.html
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Make sure you're on the 'Sharing Debugger' tab, then simply put the address into text field and click the button that says 'Debug'. Head back to your post, refresh the page and type the address in again. Tada! You're Link preview should show up.
You might not be seeing the Facebook link preview you want because the info has been cached by Facebook. (Facebook saves the info from URLs and pages that have already been shared, for better performance.) So you just may need to force Facebook to clear the cache.
Unfortunately, if your browser cache is full, the thumbnails might fail to appear on Facebook. However, this problem can be easily fixed by clearing the browser cache.
Head to the 'Facebook Link Debugger'. Enter the link to your site, click the 'scrape' button a few times. Keep clicking it until your new preview image you just uploaded appears in the preview area. And presto!
This happened after the introduction of Facebook Instant Articles, Only verified author/publisher name's shall appear on the Link preview.
The step required to solve the issue is as follows:
Sign up to Facebook Instant Articles, you will have the choose the page you need to associate while signing up.
After signing up, in the Configuration section, under the Tools section, you will be asked to enter the domain details (etc example.com), you must verify your website in-order to publish instant articles.
Follow the instruction for adding the meta tag, if you are using wordpress, you can see the instruction here. Hopefully assuming that you would be having other meta details such as app_id, publisher name, author link etc.
Soon you shall be receiving a notification for Linked Publication, asking for the confirmation. Linked Publication Preview
That's it. Soon the author profile link would be appearing in the Link Preview.
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I have a solution that worked for me. In this similar question someone has suggested using the FB_ID instead of your alias FB URL. I tried that, and initially didn't see any difference in the Object Debugger. After an hour or two, Facebook prompted me to confirm linked publications, and then I can see it correctly in the debugger:
So, first use your FB_ID instead of your alias, e.g.: https://facebook.com/123456789 instead of https://facebook.com/yourname
After I made this change, Facebook notified me and asked me to confirm linked publications, you have to manually enter the name of the FB page for whom you write, and then click the "Add" button, once confirmed it will look like:
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