Website Administrator Know How Articles

Social Networks Series

How to fix your FaceBook Like Button Cache Error

 

Somewhere in the past, Facebook started to use the link rel canonical link data to use as their page anchor link when one is inserting web a address into a facebook page or message to share.

You find a website you want to share and you copy and paste the URL into your message and a little image pops up of the website in your message you are about to send. You can use microdata formats to further specify what data and images pop up too if you like but we are not exploring that option here as this will still be incorrect and throw an error for you even if you have since corrected any canonical link error.

Fixing the canonical link for facebook like button pages

If you have a php website and are using our google-plus php styled button, you will never encounter this problem as we use a php call to add the correct canonical link every time [Yes, google attract and cultivate more naturally gifted brains which also means googlePlus button has been using the canonical link longer than facebook. Plus is also a better and saner product]. But if you are coding plain html or xhmtl etc. formats, you need to make sure you add the correct canonical in the first place. We should note that it is not mandatory to include the canonical link, but it is good form. If you dont know what the heck I am talking about, check out our seo page on link rel tags.

OK. So now we know that facebook have seen the sense in using the canonical link and that they store this data in their own cache memory. We know this as no matter what else you do, the error doesnt seem to want to correct. Your page data is now 100% correct so the question is how can you force facebook to update their cache. Can this be done?

Yes. Facebook developers have a tool they can use to explore their og data results [dont ask - it's not W3C compliant so you'd be smarter googling "microdata formats" instead] Show of hands for those who prefer sliverlight over flash? Or better put, Would you rather be beaten or flogged?. Although microsoft is a member of the W3C, they continually step outside the box of website standards. Many of us of the old school have been waiting for a very long time for the rest of the world to wake-up to the fact that internet explorer is a shoddy product. Firefox, Chrome and Safari are finally putting internet explorer in its place, as one of the minor internet browsers. And if google doesnt wake up and stop having their search results influenced by profit, duckduckgo.com/about.html [amazons search offering - go on, I dare any of you seo techies to test it out! Much cleaner, leaner and more exact results (thanks to Mick for pointing this out to me)], may very well herald an honest dawn of a re-newed bout of search engine wars. Even Bing is starting to list more small business sites compared to their days of old. Some of my SEO and Website clients are getting a sales boost from Bing as of late. OK, that's enough of what is being done to you behind your back, let's get back to the topic at hand.

Where on the internet can I Clean the FaceBook Cache?

FaceBook Cache Cleaner

Paste your offending url in the form in the above link. It will re-scan your page for the data to be used in the facebook cache and that will be the end of your problem, unless it is something else of course.

 

GooglePlus?

Here is our how to article to add the google +1 button should you like to add that to your page too.

Fin.