Facebook Link Attachment Cache, What?

Q:

When I am attempting to post a link to my blog/website on Facebook, Facebook doesn’t give me the option to use the images in my post from my newest article, why is that?

A:

Facebook has a cache of your webpage. Meaning that it stores information about your webpage for a given amount of time, rather than getting the information from your webpage every time you or someone else attempts to post a link to your webpage. Facebook does this to reduce demands on their server resources and your site. The cache is used when presenting you with the option to add an image to your post that represents your webpage. Facebook will re-cache your webpage at random intervals sometimes every 24 hours sometimes up to a week.

The best way to avoid running into an old cache on Facebook is to link to your article/page directly, rather than linking to your home page. By using the newly created article page, rather than the home page, Facebook will grab the images on your article page, instead of the images it has cached from your home page. Since the page is new Facebook will not have a cache of the page yet and will present you with all of the images on your page.

Further, from an internet, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and user friendly point of view, it’s always better to link to the article’s page directly, because this page is going to be more specific to your article than the home page of your website.

If you require Facebook to re-cache your webpage right now rather than waiting for a re-cache you can use their Debugger Tool to force a re-cache. Go to the following url and input the web address of the webpage that you wish Facebook to re-cache, then hit the debug button:

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

The page should then display the image(s) that Facebook will grab and display when a link is posted on their website to your given page.

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