php - Facebook can't scrape meta data after I've moved Wordpress to new server

Question

I've recently transferred my Wordpress website to a new server and all seemed to go smoothly. However we've discovered that Facebook can no longer pick up data for our posts.

We posts news stories to Facebook and usually it populates the header, excerpt and image as soon as we post the URL to our page, however it is no longer doing this.

Facebook Open Graph debugger shows that Facebook is seeing a 404 page for all posts published AFTER the server move. It's displaying no image and the title shows the archives list for that date. The same issue happens when someone 'likes' an individual post using the social button directly on the website.

Important to note that any URLs for posts published before the server move work fine. This data can be found by Facebook without a problem.

The website is www.thisisardee.ie. Below are examples of a post before and after the transfer, so you can see both.

BEFORE (working): http://www.thisisardee.ie/2016/03/09/ardee-western-bypass-backed-transport-authorities/

AFTER (not working): http://www.thisisardee.ie/2016/03/23/mcguinness-recalls-brussels-terror-fear/

Any help would be hugely appreciated. It's massively affecting our website as people are sharing our posts on Facebook and they're appearing without image or correct title. It looks awful.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Finally found the reasoning behind this.

After the move to Cloud hosting, from Shared hosting, I had updated my DNS records. However, I never updated my IPv6 record.

This wouldn't normally be an issue (and it explains why 99% of websites/services had no issue scraping/using my site) but Facebook appears to prioritise IPv6 over everything. So it was using my IPv6 record which was pointing to my old server and an old version of my website. Hence, it was pulling in no information for the page.

I'm surprised it was still linking to the new page after we manually put in the image and title when posting to Facebook.

I spotted this after my Share hosting plan was officially cut off today, therefore deleting my old website. The links began showing a 404 error.

Hopefully this can help others, as I've seen a lot of people with a similar issue but no solution. Update your IPv6 record as Facebook uses it!