Twitter/Reddit Images Not Showing When Sharing Post

Apologies, wrong URL – this is an example of the issue I’m having: https://imgur.com/gallery/BXZa525

Hi @fabiocrispim

We tried running the URL of the image itself (https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sphere-Flying-Cities.jpeg) through the Twitter Card Validator tool and it seems like the Twitter Bot was unable to parse the image – https://snipboard.io/P7Kfob.jpg

Upon checking your robots.txt file, it looks like you’ve set it to:

User-agent: Twitterbot
allow: / 

which doesn’t seem to be the standard output. Would it be possible for you to change the robots.txt file to the WordPress default as stated here – https://yoast.com/help/how-to-edit-robots-txt-through-yoast-seo/

And then check and run the URL through the Twitter Card Validator Tool and see if the image is then being detected?

Hey Michael, thanks for your speedy reply.

My hosting has changed my robots.txt and I’ve gone through and made changes to it too (Although I’ve now reversed it back) and none of this helped, even after clearing the validator’s cache. My WordPress hosting has stressed that nothing in the robots.txt is blocking Twitter. Reddit and Facebook are now picking up images fine, it’s just Twitter that isn’t.

What’s even more curious is that these posts work when using the card validator:

https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/the-innsmouth-case-launches-on-playstation-and-xbox-consoles/

https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/sphere-flying-cities-is-a-new-sci-fi-city-builder-launching-on-steam/

https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/greak-memories-of-azur-gets-nintendo-switch-exclusive-demo/

If I right-click the featured images on those posts into a new tab and run that URL through the validator, the validator is able to fetch them, which I guess is why they’re showing up. However, if I click the featured image in my post and then right-click it into a new tab, the URL is different and the validator cannot fetch them.

Here’s some examples:

Can’t be fetched: https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sphere-Flying-Cities.jpeg

Can be fetched: https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sphere-Flying-Cities-750×422.jpeg

Can’t be fetched: https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Greak_-Memories-Of-Azur.jpeg

Can be fetched: https://www.simplegamer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Greak_-Memories-Of-Azur-750×422.jpeg

Any idea why this could be happening?

Really appreciate your help!

Thanks for following up with us and sharing all the relevant information. The issue you’re currently experiencing is odd as we can confirm that Yoast SEO is generating the social open graph metadata correctly as expected. So, it’s up to the social media platform to decide what to show and how to show when sharing a page from the relevant website to the specific social media platform.

That said, we tested the “The Innsmouth Case Launches On PlayStation And Xbox Consoles” page from your website using the Twitter Card validator and after previewing the card a few times, the correct image appears now.

This is a clear indication the issue is specific to the cache of the social media platforms (Twitter) and once the cache is cleared, the correct image appears.

Note: why there’s no twitter:image meta on the relevant pages? When you assign an image specifically for Twitter, Yoast SEO outputs the twitter:image meta. If you don’t add an image specifically for Twitter, Yoast SEO only outputs the og:image meta as Twitter fallbacks to the og:image. So, there’s no need to output the twitter:image meta when you don’t add an image specifically for it using Yoast SEO.

Hey @mazedulislamkhan. Thanks for explaining all of that. I do find the whole situation strange.

Do you think the issue is still on Twitter’s end if the validator cannot pick up the images of newly published posts? Also, I scrolled through my Twitter account earlier today and found that ALL previous tweets are missing their featured images, despite previously showing them. The only ones that do have images are those that the validator can fetch now, and that’s only three or so posts.

I hope Twitter clears this up soon!

Thanks for following up with us, @fabiocrispim. It is very strange to us as well to see that Twitter fails to show the featured image even when everything is technically correct.

Yoast SEO is responsible for generating the social open graph meta and Twitter card meta. We can confirm that Yoast SEO is doing them just fine as expected on your website and it’s now up to Twitter to show the data correctly.

That said, we have received a few more similar reports and it’s on our radar. While we are unable to confirm immediately if this is something specific to the content filtration by the social media platforms to specific GEO locations, our investigation team found out this recently but it’s not 100% guaranteed though.

To conclude, since our plugin is generating everything correctly, you may want to reach out to the Twitter team as well to see if they can shed some light on this. If not, you may want to a bit longer to see what happens next.