Facebook Ads Not Redirecting Properly – Facebook App ID Issue

  • Resolved albarosa

    (@albarosa)


    1 week ago

    Dear Rank Math Team,

    I have been encountering an issue with links in my Facebook post descriptions that should lead to my website but instead result in a black page. When users click the link, two buttons appear asking them if they want to continue to my website or return to Facebook. However, the button to continue to my website does not work, and nothing happens when clicked. The “back to Facebook” button works fine.

    Upon using the Facebook Sharing Debugger tool (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/), I found the following warning: “Missing Properties The following required properties are missing: fb:app_id”

    I then followed your article on how to request the ID and key, which I entered in the RankMath dashboard under –> Social Meta –> Facebook App and Facebook Secret, but the error message persists.

    Attempts I’ve made to resolve the issue:

    • Adjusted CSP header rule
    • Disabled the security plugin
    • Cleared the cache after each attempt
    • Checked all blocked IPs to ensure no Facebook range is mistakenly included
    • Disabled custom code, etc.

    It is worth mentioning that the faulty URLs in the posts, which do not lead to my website, are from paid ads and from ads that appear to my followers in their feeds, rather than the ones found on my fan page. The original links on my fan page work fine. Only URLs from these paid ads + feed ads/posts lead to the black page with the two buttons, with the one meant to take users to my website not working.

    Do you have any idea why the app ID isn’t being recognized, even though the Scraped URL report detects the code (<meta property=”fb:app_id” content=”12345678912345″>)?

    Thank you and best regards

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Support Rank Math Support

    (@rankmathsupport)

    Hello @albarosa,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math support.

    Our plugin can’t control why the post URLs are not working when visiting them using Facebook posts. Our plugin’s meta tags are only used to generate the link preview. The fb:app_id tag also doesn’t have anything to do with the issue. You can share an affected URL so we can check if we can provide you further insights that might help you fix the issue.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Thread Starter albarosa

    (@albarosa)

    Hello @rankmathsupport,

    Thank you for your response.

    Regarding:
    ?The fb tag also doesn’t have anything to do with the issue.“

    Are you certain about that? It seems to me that my website, which seems to appear as an app for mobile users within Facebook’s in-app browser, might not be properly recognized. Otherwise, I can’t explain this behavior.

    On November 6, 2024, I included a link in one of my promoted Facebook posts, which, according to the insights, generated 20 link-clicks. However, none of these clicks appeared in my access log files. The only related entries I found were requests from “facebookexternalhit” with Facebook IP addresses. Based on my research, “facebookexternalhit” is used for crawling content and is unrelated to user clicks. This raises the question: where are the actual link-clicks? I should at least see some of them in my access logs.

    I conducted test clicks with friends who deliberately went to my Facebook page when the promotion was over and clicked on the post link. These clicks were correctly logged in my access files, confirming that the issue lies with posts being shared and interacted with via Facebook’s in-app browser.

    Here’s the link to the mentioned post: https://tinyurl.com/3nr5cwf6

    On November 11, 2024, I published another post, which I also promoted and included a link in the description. According to the insights, this post generated 11 Link-clicks. The behavior was identical to the first post, with one exception: a friend was scrolling through his Facebook feed next to me and saw my post.

    He said:
    “Hey, there’s your post in my feed!”
    I replied:
    “Oh, let me check, I’m having issues with the links!”

    I clicked on the link from his feed, and it brought up the infamous black page with two buttons. One of the buttons, which was supposed to lead to my website, didn’t even work.

    Here’s the link to the described post: https://tinyurl.com/56zfw6b7

    Last night, I published another post with a link and promoted it. The behavior is the same: none of the alleged clicks appear in my access logs, and I only see Facebook IP addresses with “facebookexternalhit.”

    Additionally, my reach has dropped significantly, despite good engagement on my posts. The paid promotion of my post should reach 300-800 paid accounts daily, but after the first 24 hours, I’ve only reached 150 people total (50 organic + 100 paid).

    I’m essentially paying to reach my own followers, yet the numbers remain low, and my links are malfunctioning.

    Here’s the link to the post: https://tinyurl.com/y6ra7m4x

    For the reasons mentioned above, it seems plausible to me that a faulty FB APP-ID recognition could be causing these interaction issues. This is especially concerning because the warning is displayed in the Facebook Debugger Tool. I have correctly entered the FB APP-ID into your plugin, and the code is also shown in the Debugger Tool. Nevertheless, the warning persists.

    I’d greatly appreciate any insights or information you might have.

    P.S.
    My fan page has no blocks or warnings; the status is completely clean.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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