What does your website look like to Facebook?

What does your website look like to Facebook?

Andrew O'Sullivan | 10/03/2011

The Like button is everywhere - it's the poster-child of the social web.
 
The Facebook "Share" functionality probably comes in close behind. It's one of the most cost-effective Facebook integrations, and at its simplest integration, anyone can put it on any page and it should, in theory "just work".
 
But there's a trap for young players.
 
When you share (or Like) a webpage, Facebook scrapes that page for metadata and descriptive information to represent the page on Facebook. Like this:


But how does Facebook know which information to use? There are two ways:
 
1. If the site developer has added Facebook-friendly "Open Graph" meta tags to the page, they have complete control over the information Facebook displays.
 
2. If Facebook meta tags are absent, Facebook makes a best guess at which text, images or video preview (in some cases) to use.
 
 
The catch is that Facebook then caches this data for a considerable amount of time (in some tests, over two weeks!). If you're not happy with the page representation it pulls first time out, you (and anyone who shares your site) are stuck with it. And don't get me started on the feeling  you get when you don't get it exactly right the second time!
 
Enter Facebook URL Linter - a handy preview tool that lets you scrape a page for data before you add that sharing functionality to your site. Decide whether you want an article image, a video, or your site logo as the "thumbnail" for your site - implement your Facebook meta tags, and then use the tool to check that everything's working as you'd like it to.
 
Go on, try it. You'll be surprised at how many sites don't add this simple piece of optimisation to make sure they maximise the value of every share.
 
Your Mum always told you it was polite to share - now there's no excuse not to.

tags: Online Trends ,  Facebook ,  Web Design ,  Tips & Tricks