You probably have experienced something like this before, you share an article on Facebook, but suddenly Facebook doesn’t display an image for your shared post or displays an image which is not related to your article. In this article we will explain why this can happen sometimes and what you can do to resolve sharing related issues.
Why does Facebook display the wrong image?
When you share an article on Facebook (or any other social network), the social network will crawl / scrape the URL and take the information that is needed to display the Facebook post properly. So in the end Facebook will take the first image that seems to be suitable and will display that image in your post. It’s also possible that Facebook isn’t able to find a suitable image and in that case there won’t be an image displayed for the post. Actually this usually isn’t an issue with your WordPress theme or website, but just a normal process.
How to make posts on Facebook display properly?
The good thing is that it’s possible to help Facebook find the correct information for the Facebook posts on your website. To achieve this, you’ll need to provide Facebook Open Graph Meta tags on your website which will provide all the information Facebook will need to display your Facebook post properly. This does not only include images, but also title and description of your post or page.
The most convenient way of providing proper Facebook Open Graph information is by using a plugin like for example WP Facebook Open Graph protocol. This plugin will ensure that your website provides all the information that will be needed for an awesome sharing experience and this not only works for Facebook, but also for social networks like Google Plus or Linkedin.
Test your posts with the Facebook Debugger
By the way, you can easily test your posts and pages with the Facebook Debugger Tool and see what information Facebook is pulling in to display your posts. In case you have tried sharing something before you were providing proper Facebook Open Graph information, it’s possible that Facebook still has cached the old information and still won’t display your posts as expected. In that case you can click “Fetch new scrape information” to force Facebook to update the information.
The information in this article has also been helpful for users with the following questions:
- How can I make Facebook display correct image?
- Why is Facebook not displaying images?
- Facebook is displaying an incorrect page title
- Blog title does not display on Facebook
- Facebook post is missing description
- Facebook is displaying wrong information