Google+ Sharing Article – Thumbnail problem

Hi guys,

I have a strange problem with Google+ starting last week. Every single time I am sharing/posting an article I get the same thumbnail/image. I have attached a screenshot maybe someone knows how to fix it. Thank you.

http://oi61.tinypic.com/24e3iv7.jpg

Me too!

For me is the same problem. There are always the wrong pictures posted on google +. Facebook and Twitter is all good

• This reply was modified 11 years by Florian_XFX.

I’m not having these issues,so it’s not a theme issue..when i share a post to my google page it share perfect…

Issues can usually be traced to one of the following:
1) robots.txt file blocking access to uploads folder or custom image folder
2) images too large for featured image; sometimes social media systems hiccup on very large images; especially if over 25kb
3) googlebot using scrape method vs meta data for image (very common); but cannot determine best image when featured image is background element such as full-width image; this is why you sometimes see author photo or local hosted ad banner as selected image; this is why “wrong image” is shown; Google is grabbing from a related image on the page, which is not the featured image. This is because the “classic” Google parser went for the first image in the post body 100% of the time and ignored the meta data which hints the right image to use. I’ve theorized that from time to time they fallback to that system and ignore all image meta data. This is still used by Google News, for example — scraping and not using the meta data pointer to image to use.
4) google image bank overloaded; deferred; try again next day or later
5) google having hiccups parsing page unrelated to theme; issue with only grabbing photo and URL; or no image at all, or wrong image
6) facebook image grabber sometimes blocked due to their annoying ping of your web server to do geolocation and many systems like CSF will start blocking the IPs that Facebook uses, hence why you get no populated elements at all on sharing to FB; host / server needs to clear temp firewall blocks to clear up

Be aware Google has been doing massive changes to their network in August, due to phasing out author image and G+ data in SERPS, finally updating some things like the Google alerts page which was 5 years old, now updated; and long line of things changing post Panda 4.0 and Google changing their priorities for G+. How many G+ hangouts have you heard about lately? (None.)

We deal with couple dozen websites, mostly news portals updated daily with image and original news items, and run into all sorts of bizarro things with G+ lately. This usually clears up. Note that I more often see the problem with WordPress sites than non-WP sites, which is an indication there is some inherent issue which is unrelated to any specific theme, but not quite sure what it is.

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for your reply. As far as I can see the problem occurs only with Google+(Facebook and Twitter are working perfectly fine). The issue seems to be with the featured image (if another image is inserted in the article, Google+ will grab it with no problem) and started only 1-2 weeks ago. I’ve tried to deactivate all the plugins but with no luck. I’m pretty sure that the problem lies somewhere between the latest changes to the template or/and with the latest Google+ updates.

Looking forward to an answer from one of the admins/moderators maybe they can help us more.

Kind regards,

Well, if it’s an issue with old version of theme, best bet is to install today’s update and see if it changes. Also make sure you hack the header.php file to remove the section which inserts duplicate og:image tag, as that might also be issue.

My point generally was that Google is inconsistent regardless of theme, website, or meta data on properly grabbing all the data. And may have nothing to do with the theme, which you could easily test by backing up your settings, then temporarily switching to twenty-fourteen theme, then doing a save to see difference. Simple way to debug if specific to your “site” and images, or the “theme.” 🙂

Hi Chrisopher,

I already updated to the latest version, still same issue. Thank you for letting me know about the header.php but to be honest I don’t know what exactly I need to remove 😀
Regarding Google+… there’s nothing more to say, I think it’s useless, just a tool for data mining and collection. Hopefully it will be closed soon, fingers crossed :))
I’m gonna try tomorrow backing up everything and switching to the default theme. Thank you once again for your help, it is very much appreciated.

Best regards,

See this … it didn’t seem to impact the issue,
https://forum.tagdiv.com/topic/duplicate-ogimage-tag-due-to-fb-video-fix-update/

but I *did* notice the problem is only on my site which uses the show featured image on, vs that being off and then manually inserting the featured image at top of the post ….

view your page source to see the duplicate og:image tags; if using YOAST SEO or similar, you will see the theme insert one above the YOAST stuff.

I am going to try changing the images on my problem blog from the auto show featured image above post, to actually putting it into the post; however, you wouldn’t presume that would be the issue…. but never know.

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Definitive update on this topic!

Since I have brand new blog (2 posts!) which I setup this weekend, as a migration of an old static section of business website, to a new folder using WP and Newspaper, I was also having issue with Google+ not grabbing photo+summary, and instead only grabbing my author photo + URL or headline.

So, here’s what I did.

I switched from the full width giant photo (style 4), to style 2, with featured image shown; still same problem.

I switched “show featured image off” and *ALSO* switched off the lightbox feature since I don’t use that — remember Google doesn’t like images which are links as they by default presume them to be ads not featured photos when scraping — and then placed my featured image into both of my new posts, and resaved both.

Viola. Went to share both on Google+ and both of my posts from new blog setup dropped in instantly into G+.

example… works!

https://plus.google.com/102627062589158403110/posts/a39F9Lrpa8t

I am not sure whether it’s the featured images outside of post, since I don’t have problem with that on another site with Newspaper; but I am guessing it’s the lightbox under the post settings being on by default that may be the culprit. So try that FIRST (click to off), and see what happens with your G+ shares.

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

Yep, the featured image isnt showing in G+. However, setting in off to show the featured image and insert in manually at the beginning of the post is not an option for me.

Thanks for the quick fix Christopher, but as Arved007 mention above, switching off the featured image and insert it manually is not an option for me right now. Regarding the og:image duplicate I just removed it thanks to your guide in the other topic. Still waiting for a fix from one of the moderators.

Thanks

I will also do further tests with my particular new site, since only 2 posts, I can mess with it easily enough, although the two posts are already 301 redirected from the two 15 year old articles from main part of site.

I will try to switch to larger image outside of post with lightbox off and see if that does it.

This may be totally unrelated, since I also first tried with the large full width image and lightbox on, to place a small image of the featured image at bottom of the post, and that didn’t seem to work with G+ either. Again, G+ has some on/off/on/off issues that I see from our other sites where sometimes they grab the full text sometimes just photo and headline. Weird.

However in this one case, switching off lightbox on featured images, AND placing featured image into post, solved it for me.

The problem just resolved for me. I guess it was something on Google side.

hello,

I’ve got this issue after the upgrade too.

I don’t want insert featured images any more. I’m using the feature image for publishing on social networks.

I’m going to try disabling lightbox.

Thank you for letting us know Arved. All OK for me also, finally 🙂
Lucian, you can mark this thread as fixed. Huge thanks to all who tried to help.

Im having the same problem since i’ve updated to theme to the latest version.

Is there a fix for this?

Thanks

Works for me.

I met same problem one year after the post was posted. I am looking the solution for it, some one can help me.