Facebook shares on each of my posts dramatically decreasing – is there a prob?
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If by “buy my free WordPress.com site” you’re referring to setting up a custom domain (pepore.com as an example), then yes – you’re correct. When you switch to a custom domain, you would reset your sharing counts back to zero because the current shares are attributed to https://pepore.wordpress.com not http://pepore.com.
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Hi everyone!
I have read that there was a transition from http to https and that affected the counters.From now on, will the future shares be affected again, or is the problem solved?
If the problem isn’t yet solved, what is the true solution? To buy a domain name, that does not end to wordpress.com? Can I then easily link it to the same blog? Should I buy hosting as well for the specific problem with the counter? And then I will restart from zero counter to all posts, but never decrease only increase, correct?
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Please see below:
From now on, will the future shares be affected again, or is the problem solved?
To fully understand this, it may help to cover how shares actually appear by the sharing icon. When you load your site, we send a “ping” to Facebook with the URL of the post you’re loading. Facebook (and other sharing services) returns the number of times that they’ve seen that particular URL across their services. We display that number beside the sharing icon.
Free WordPress.com sites (.wordpress.com URL) are forced to HTTPS. Previous to this, the URLs for your site shared on Facebook were all HTTP. That worked fine because your site wasn’t forced to HTTPS just yet so when you loaded a post, we pinged Facebook for HTTP shares and everything worked as expected.
Now that we’ve forced to HTTPS, the URL we send in the “ping” is HTTPS instead of HTTP. Facebook hasn’t seen the HTTPS URL before so it returns 0 (or a lower sharing number). It doesn’t return the previous value attributed to the HTTP URL.
Going forward, Facebook shares will be counted because the URL in the share will be HTTPS. Previous shares to Facebook with the HTTP URL are not recorded.
There’s a bit more background broken down in this post if you’re curious:
If the problem isn’t yet solved, what is the true solution?
The true solution would need to come from Facebook. Ideally, when Facebook encounters a redirect like the one we have setup from HTTP to HTTPS, they would “migrate” the sharing numbers, effectively moving them over to the primary URL.
To buy a domain name, that does not end to wordpress.com? Can I then easily link it to the same blog? Should I buy hosting as well for the specific problem with the counter? And then I will restart from zero counter to all posts, but never decrease only increase, correct?
This would actually make the issue worse in a sense. The sharing counts would reset back to 0 again. Referring back to the explanation above, if you purchase a custom domain (example.com), now, we’ll ping Facebook with that new domain, which it hasn’t seen before. The result would be 0 shares reported.
As mentioned above, shares are being recorded for HTTPS URLs so the count should be going up with each share. If you’d like to setup a custom domain, I can definitely help you do that. However, just know that the sharing numbers would reset back to 0.
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Hi Jeremey,
The more this conversation evolves, the more it sounds like the ‘conversation with the Facebook engineers’ has ended – is this correct? Are we just waiting and hoping that the Facebook engineers will do something about this? What was the last bit of feedback from the engineers?
Someone mentioned earlier on this thread that it seems that even with the new Facebook url the ‘free sites’ were forced into, the shares are not being counted correctly having put this to the test myself.
What’s the bottom line with this? Is this likely to be resolved in all honesty?
Thanks Jeremey,
Zeena -
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Dear jeremeylduvall,
Thank very much for your answers. That means that the future posts will be OK? Isn’t that right?
Thanx again!
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Dear jeremeylduvall,
Thank very much for your answers. That means that the future posts will be OK? Isn’t that right?
Thanx again!
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Upset, angry and totally disappointed. So many answers, but still not getting any solutions.
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The more this conversation evolves, the more it sounds like the ‘conversation with the Facebook engineers’ has ended – is this correct? Are we just waiting and hoping that the Facebook engineers will do something about this? What was the last bit of feedback from the engineers?
This is not the case at all. We’re still hoping this can get resolved in the future. That having been said, this isn’t likely to get fixed this week or even within the next few weeks maybe months. I apologize if my previous replies indicated otherwise. We have reached out to contact Facebook regarding the issue. If/When this gets resolved in the future, I’ll be sure to update you.
Thank very much for your answers. That means that the future posts will be OK? Isn’t that right?
Correct!
The Twitter counts now seem to be loading correctly on your site. Can you confirm on your side?
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Hi Jeremey,
Just wanted to get a response to my last post? Think it’s clear members are quite upset about this – we need more information other than it’s up to Facebook to fix this. This clearly isn’t happening and it’s not acceptable, especially if people are dependant on their sites for income, to not offer more definitive responses.
Have re-posted for ease.
Zeena
Hi Jeremey,
The more this conversation evolves, the more it sounds like the ‘conversation with the Facebook engineers’ has ended – is this correct? Are we just waiting and hoping that the Facebook engineers will do something about this? What was the last bit of feedback from the engineers?
Someone mentioned earlier on this thread that it seems that even with the new Facebook url the ‘free sites’ were forced into, the shares are not being counted correctly having put this to the test myself.
What’s the bottom line with this? Is this likely to be resolved in all honesty?
Thanks Jeremey,
Zeena -
Have just seen your response – thank you. So when you say:
“If/When this gets resolved in the future, I’ll be sure to update you.”
That you won’t update us unless it’s fixed? Which would imply it might not get fixed? What’s the likelihood?
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@naturalmystic095
Your blog is devoid of any blogger created content. You are rabbit hopping from thread to thread posting unhelpful and off-topic comments as if this is a chat forum when it isn’t. These are technical support forums. Please do not post into any threads unless you have a relevant on-topic and helpful answer to share. -
Hi @zeena2001,
That you won’t update us unless it’s fixed? Which would imply it might not get fixed? What’s the likelihood?
I’ll definitely update you if there are any further developments, but I’m not sure how quickly I’ll have new information. As mentioned previously, this could take months.
As for the likelihood of this getting fixed, unfortunately, I don’t have an estimate for you. I realize this is frustrating to hear, and I apologize. We’ll keep this thread open so we can communicate any changes.
Great!
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Here is yet another post that was previously ‘debugged’ by someone on your end to reflect the correct number of shares – but I see now that is has been reset, whatever, -and it is now down to three shares. This post had nearly five hundred shares- what is going on? This is not a matter of double counting.
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Hi @danellapomme,
This is due to the same change mentioned here:
In short, we’re no longer including shares attributed to the HTTP version of your URL.
For example, please check the following two URLs, which report what Facebook sees for each version of your URL (HTTP and HTTPS):
You’ll notice that the HTTP URL (top) shows a considerably higher share count. These sharing counts are no longer added beside the sharing button. As explained in the thread above, the only “solution” would need to come from Facebook.
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Hi Jeremey,
This is ridiculous. To be told we need to ‘sit patiently’ and just wait, for possibly months, for some sort of outcome – whatever that may be – is beyond unreasonable. And if the matter is just never resolved, are we to presume (given you don’t seem particularly forthcoming with any sort of deadline), that we’ll never hear anything at all as you have ‘nothing to update’?
Can you please supply:
a) a press office email address/ contact details
b) a complaints email address/ contact details
Should this thread get ignored, or deleted even, might I suggest the others with similar complaints on this thread contact me via my blog (there is an email address there) so we can collectively apply pressure to resolve this issue?
I appreciate how busy you and your fellow Happiness Engineers must be Jeremey, and will, as I’ve said before, relay that but I’m afraid I must take the matter further. I look forward to hearing from you shortly,
Many thanks,
Zeena -
And I think we all understand ‘the solution must come from Facebook’, as we’ve been told this many times, but as you are our only point of contact this isn’t really very helpful I’m afraid.
If you can’t supply us with a contact from Facebook, as you’ve said before, and are unable to supply with any specifics about the state of play from the ‘Facebook side’, which you’ve also said, then you will need to supply us with contact details for a press department and complaints department as requested above.
Again, many thanks,
Zeena
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