Problem Fixed: New Facebook Likes Not Showing Up

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For the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that new Facebook likes weren’t showing up on our site. The funny thing was old pages which had likes previously would increment correctly. New pages would register your like, but not reflect that on the page once you refresh. I did some research online, but only a few people were experiencing the issue and no one really had much clue what was happening.

Obviously it wasn’t affecting everyone or else you’d have tons of websites complaining. I had sent in a bug report as well as contacted my friend who works at Facebook who forwarded my issue to the appropriate department, but I never heard back.

I’m happy to announce that the problem has been fixed. I took some time this weekend to investigate the issue and found out it was related to the open graph changes I made in the middle of November. It turns out that if you include og:tags, the like button behaves differently. When I removed the og:tags from the site, the likes were incrementing correctly and even showing the previous like count.

After a bit of searching I landed on this page: Open Graph Protocol on Facebook. The real useful thing was the Facebook URL Linter, a debug tool to show you what Facebook sees when it parses your website. It turns out I was missing fb:admins or fb:app_id from my meta properties. After adding the app id (which you can register for one here), things started working again.

Another really useful trick I learned was that you can force Facebook to clear its cache and re-parse your page by using the Facebook URL Linter tool. Sometimes Facebook fails to fetch your thumbnail or if you decide to change the title/description, new people liking your page will still get the old data. But if you run your page through that debug tool, it’ll refresh.

Hope this helps anyone else who’s hitting a similar issue!

45 thoughts on “Problem Fixed: New Facebook Likes Not Showing Up”

  1. Hi I am getting new likes on my Facebook page but they are not making the number of likes go up. I think this is what you are describing above but I tried to follow your steps above and I don’t get it!! Do you do instructions for dummies? 🙂

  2. hi friend.. i have a page on facebook which has 37,000 likes.. i’m facing the same problem . i’m getting very less likes.. when i upload a photo it does.nt show on my profile’s home page.. earlier it was showing but not now.. i’m getting only 200 likes.. earlier it was like 1500, 1000 and 800. please tell me what should i do now.. thanx

    • Not quite sure if you’re experiencing the same issue as us, but does the Facebook URL Linter URL above report any errors for the page that you’re experiencing issues on?

  3. Hi I’m getting the same issue as listed above. New likes on my page are not making the number of likes go up. I have tried the URL tool, but when i use it, it doesn’t work….. Help.

  5. Likes and comments for all my profile pictures, on my last status update, and last video posted are not showing up at all, but older likes still appear on my timeline. Everything was working fine until I uploaded a new user photo, and now I don’t see the likes even though I’m still getting notifications. I tried using the Object Debugger & got this error: Facebook URLs aren’t scrapable by this Debugger. Try your own.

    • Also, I tried liking things on my own timeline and as soon as I like them, it immediately unlikes them & I can’t click the like button again… but if I do, it unlikes itself again & the number of likes does not go up

    • on my “home” wall I saw a message that a status I posted had gotten near to 40 likes but when I look at it on my personal wall those likes don’t show up.

      This is weird and really makes me sad. Please get facebook to fix this…

  7. Same problem here, I’ve had this problem for over a year. Facebook apparently needs to fix it. Because, unfortunately, I do not understand HTML code or any other comp-speak, as well as probably most people…or maybe I’m just a dummy. Do you think we’re being ‘jipped’ out of ‘likes’ for a reason?…I’ll try and send an email to the facebook staff as well. Hope the mystery gets solved.

  11. we used to have almost 3,000 likes on facebook..then one day we lost more than 1,000 likes! now we’re stuck at 1,700+ we cant get over 1,800 likes, everytime we do, we lose likes the next day..say we had 1,802 likes today, tomorrow morning we’ll be back at 1,769 likes..pretty weird..idk what facebook did and how to fix it..we also used to get around 500 (at the least) or more insight (views on a post) but now, we’re lucky if we even get 200 people who sees our post -.- on twitter though, we have more than 12k followers and counting everyday, idk whats up with facebook..we tried contacting them like a few months ago, and they never got back to us, this has been happening for about 4-5 months, whenever i look at our like graph it would only show that in a months time about only 5 people unliked our page, and we get 4-20+ likes everyday, if we got 159 likes in a month and only 9 people unliked us throughout the month of january of 2013, then it doesnt add up..we we’re at 1,800+ on new years, how are we still stuck at 1,760+ likes? it’s really frustrating 🙁

    • Hello, am also facing the same problem as you. My page is only one year old. I never go pass 188 likes. If I have any new people liking me, it will dropped back to 188 within one or two day’s time. I also have friends who liked me but their likes are not showing up or adding to the count. Very strange I do not know what to do.

  12. Hi Jester, I lost 3000 likes on my facebook page the other night. I have just looked at the net and apparently Facebook is getting rid of fake accounts and their likes.
    I have sent them a letter complaining about it, but I have never heard anything back unfortunately. I am very frustrated too!

  15. this explaination is not enough and good for my question that i m facing a problem thst my account in facebook opens but the my homepage and other posts;i mean facebook page showing like notepade typed page,appears??

  16. Thanks for trying to help by posting your suggestion but when I went to the Facebook URL Linter and entered the URL to my Facebook page, I received an error message ‘Facebook URLs aren’t scrapable by this Debugger. Try your own.’ I am now totally confused. Any thoughts? I already sent a message to Facebook.

  18. Oh well. Some likes have started to come through. In the scheme of things, I can’t let FB get to me. Like anything else, it’s a tool. In the meantime, if you want to come SCUBA diving, visit the page, like it, and come see us in Florida! 🙂

  19. Hi- I’m confused because I tried doing this for my personal page and I still get this error message others are getting, “Facebook URLs aren’t scrapable by this Debugger. Try your own”. My issue is, to be specific, I’m not receiving any notifications for when people like a photo that I’ve been tagged in or that I’ve posted on my timeline. yet it will show that 11 people like it . It just doesn’t turn up in red or on my list of notifications on my menu which would normally say “you have 11 notifications… so and so likes your photo…” etc. -with a list of the 11 people that like it. if that makes sense. This is for my personal page, not my business page. Do you have any suggestions? I’m waiting to hear back from facebook but as we all know, it’s very possible I will never get a response. Thank you!!

  20. hi. I am facing same problem. I am not able to see my likes on my page. I tried your method..it is showing.. see below. pls tell me the method for this.

    Missing Required Property The ‘og:type’ property is required, but not present.
    Notice
    Open Graph Warnings That Should Be Fixed
    Inferred Property The ‘og:url’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.
    Inferred Property The ‘og:title’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.

    • Hello, I ran my website through the debugger and this is what I get:

      Open Graph Warnings That Should Be Fixed
      Inferred Property The ‘og:url’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.
      Inferred Property The ‘og:title’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.
      Inferred Property The ‘og:description’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.
      Inferred Property The ‘og:image’ property should be explicitly provided, even if a value can be inferred from other tags.

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