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Share counts are important for showing your social proof. In case you have a problem with their work here you may find the most common situations.
1. My Facebook counter is not showing values (or showing outdated values)
Facebook has a share counter API rate access limit. That makes possible your site to make a limited number of requests for a specific period of time for getting the accurate number of share counts. To avoid that you can do one of the following:
- Increase the period of share counter update. This you can do from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Counter Update Interval – choose a period greater than 3 hours
- Active Cache plugin/server compatible mode from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup if a cache plugin is used. This mode makes possible to do a background counter update during the period when your cache plugin is showing a static content. This will avoid generating a too many requests for counter update when cache time expires.
- Activate client side counter update from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Client side Facebook counter update (the recommended solution working for all users)
- Activate the option to increase the period of time update for older posts. Usually older posts has less dynamic of share counter change so activation of that option will not affect dramatically the counter update. This you can do from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Increase update period for older posts
2. My Twitter counter is not appearing
Twitter remove their official counter a few years back. Inside plugin you have option to show Twitter share counter provided by an external service like opensharecounts.com or twitcount.com. In addition you have the chance to show internal share counter. To activate display of your Twitter share counter visit Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Single Button Counter and in the Twitter share counter menu select the mode of work. In case you choose and external service please be sure to visit their site and complete the requirements for share counter activation for your domain (or counter will not appear).
3. My LinkedIn and Google+ share counters are not showing
That happens because these two social networks remove their share counter API. With that action all the generated share counts cannot be updated anymore. For LinkedIn and Google+ you can select from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Single Button Counter the mode of work. You can switch to Internal Share Counter (which will increase with click over the share buttons) or you can set to hide the share counter
4. A few of my networks are not showing share counters
Plugin shows share counters for all networks that has official share counter API (getting official share values for page) and internal counter for a few other of the major used networks. The default setting will not show share counter for all buttons. In case you wish to show internal based counters you can do this by activating share counter for all networks from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Single Button Counter -> Activate internal counters for all networks that do not support API count
5. My share counters are not accurate or not showing. What to do?
In case your share counter is not showing the accurate value you can do the following checks:
- A button share counter or total share counter shows NaN as a value. That usually results of real-time share counter usage. The real time share counters are good for test and small sites but they are not recommended for real life usage sites. The real time update does a call on each page load to a social API – with the existing connection rates applied by social networks after a period of time you may start seeing this message. Also this may result because of a social network remove the official counter value from their API.
- Check the settings you have made for sharing counter display. Inside Easy Social Share Buttons you can set a global button styles o position/device styles. The position or device styles has higher priority and they will always overwrite your global styles. So please check the settings of the position where share counters are not appearing (Where to Display -> Position Settings -> Share Buttons Position) and then the global settings in Social Sharing -> Template & Style for the share counters display setup
- Are you using the avoid negative proof option? The avoid negative proof will hide share counters unless they reach a specific number of shares. You can check the option usage in Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup
- Do you make a change inside your URL structure? The most common change that is made is switching for example to SSL (https). If so than your share counters will reset because networks count the shares using URL as a unique key. We have a quick solution for that with activation of the share counter recovery. This you can do from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Share Counter Recovery. All steps for the most common share recovery when switching to SSL (https) you can find here.
- My share counter values are lower than appearing on site. Inside Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress we provide a share counter protection. This protection will not save the share counter value if it is lower than the past stored inside plugin. Sometimes if you are using plugin for duplication of content you may copy the previous shares from existing post to a new draft. In this case you can temporary deactivate the cache to ensure a full update will happen from Social Sharing -> Share Counters Setup -> Force save new shares. This you can do also without activating the option for a single post or page using the top bar plugin menu (if visible based on your settings). From the menu select Update Counters -> Clear counters & history for the current post/page
- Do a share counter from the System Status menu. Learn more for System status here.
In case non of above help you solve the problem you have you can start a topic inside the official support board.