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Getting Inconsistent Facebook Like Counters on Website "Recommend This Site" Button Clicks and "Share This Story" Button Clicks

I manage a couple sites. I have programmed share and recommend buttons to track FB Likes for recommending the site and sharing articles on the site. Both sets of code are shown below (do they look right?).

Lately, I am being told by the client that the Like counters fluctuate dramatically up and down over a short span of time. The dramatic increase and decrease is not 1 or 2 likes but dozens at at time and within minutes.

Has anyone experienced this sort of result of your website from your programming efforts?

Are there any diagnostic tools out there to help explain these programming results?

Thanks.

Share Button (indented for readability only)

<iframe
    src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php
        ?app_id=123456789012345
        &amp;href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com/article-slug/
        &amp;send=false
        &amp;layout=standard
        &amp;width=144
        &amp;show_faces=false
        &amp;action=like
        &amp;colorscheme=light
        &amp;font
        &amp;height=30"
    scrolling="no"
    frameborder="0"
    style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:144px; height:30px;"
    allowTransparency="true"
>
</iframe>

Recommend Button (indented for readability only)

<iframe
    src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php
        ?app_id=123456789012345
        &amp;href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com%2F
        &amp;layout=standard
        &amp;show_faces=false
        &amp;width=170
        &amp;action=like
        &amp;font
        &amp;colorscheme=light
        &amp;height=30"
    scrolling="no"
    frameborder="0"
    style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:170px; height:30px;"
    allowTransparency="true"
>
</iframe>

So I am curious. Is there a place I can look within Facebook to see the Likes and Unlikes for http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com%2F? Likewise, is there a place I can look within Facebook to see the Likes and Unlikes for http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com/article-slug/? Where are these counters kept? Do they need to relate to something actually defined or setup within Facebook? Or can any website have these buttons regardless of whether the site URL is defined within the FB empire?

Solution

  • Depends on what you are looking for, here are a few resources you can check.

    1. Check this

      http://graph.facebook.com/93836527897

    2. You can surely try the facebook linter or debugger here

      https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

    3. Finally check this answer Getting total likes for facebook app page