Fixing the Thumbnail Image, Title and Description for Shared Links

When sharing a page, AddToAny passes the page URL and title to services, and many services will use that data. Some services, such as Facebook, use the shared URL only to scrape the page's HTML code for metadata. A few services offer tools for seeing exactly what data and media will be used for sharing.

To modify a page's thumbnail image, description, and additional metadata for these services, you can provide meta tags in the HTML code of the page.

Implementing Open Graph Meta Tags

You can implement meta tags in a number of ways. In content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, a theme/template might allow you to modify a page's meta tags (description, thumbnail image, etc.), otherwise you can typically find a plugin/module that implements meta tags.

If you are coding the meta tags into a page or a theme/template, add the following HTML code, for example, to the <head> section.

<meta property="og:title" content="Example Page">
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/images/photo.jpg">
<meta property="og:description" content="This is just an example page.">
<meta property="og:url" content="http://example.com/page.html">

For more information about Open Graph meta tags and how they relate to Facebook sharing, see Facebook's guide on Open Graph tags.

Facebook Share Troubleshooting

Input a page URL into Facebook's URL debugger to see what Facebook sees. "Fetch new scrape information" to have Facebook refresh their cache after making changes to your page.

Twitter Cards

By default, Twitter uses the page title supplied by AddToAny, and AddToAny permits further customizing of tweets.

Richer tweets that may include images or video are called Twitter Cards. When tweeting a link that Twitter has approved for a Twitter Card, Twitter looks for proprietary meta tags on the shared page that are similar to (and commonly mixed with) Open Graph meta tags. Enter a page URL into Twitter's Card Validator to preview the page's Twitter Card and to refresh their cache after making changes to the page.

Google+ Share Troubleshooting

Input a page URL into Google's Structered Data Testing Tool to see what Google+ sees.

LinkedIn Share Troubleshooting

LinkedIn does not offer a debugger, nor a method to fix certain issues with sharing. The only self-serve workaround for some issues is to move a page to a new URL. LinkedIn automatically clears their cache on a weekly basis.