[Troubleshooting] Social share counts aren’t showing up? Follow this checklist

Overview

The official share counters are supported for the following social networks: Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, VK, Reddit, Buffer, OK, Xing, Yummly, Tumblr. In this list, we can also put Twitter if you choose one of the external services providing a source of data. Sometimes there may be a problem with the share values – they are wrong or they are missing. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot the problem.

All other networks can have an internal share counter enabled. The internal share counter increases with a click on the buttons. And it is taking part of the total shares. The internal counter is subject to additional option activation in the settings.

Check your share counter setup

• Facebook – to get share values you need to have token filled in the settings (for Facebook API) or API key (SharedCount.com). There is no public access available as of May 2021. How to create and set Facebook Token.
• Twitter – does not have an official share counter. You should choose between internal counter, no counter, or one of the support external services in the settings. The plugin supports all available external Twitter counter services. To use the selected in the menu you should also visit the service site and complete their requirements for counter activation. Where to set my Twitter settings.
• LinkedIn – does not have an official share counter. If you are using the plugin before the API shut down your old posts will have values. If you wish to show counter in the settings you can choose internally. Where to set LinkedIn internal counter.
• Pinterest, StumbleUpon, VK, Reddit, Buffer, OK, Xing, Yummly, Tumblr – those networks do not require any additional settings or configuration.
• Other networks – other networks not mentioned above do not have an official share counter. You can use an internal counter instead. Where to activate the internal counter.

Wait a few hours after installing Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress (or do a full cache clear)

Share counts are queried when a visitor hits a post for the first time. So after you first install Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress, it might take a little while for shares to show up across your entire site. It was developed this way for performance reasons, to keep your site running fast.

If you chose a less frequent share count refresh rate, it could take even longer.

The same will happen if you set up a full counter update on the website from the settings.

Check your minimum share count setting

Double-check what you have your minimum share count set to. If you have it set too high, it could be that they aren’t displaying as they haven’t met the minimum threshold.

Force update of the counter for the post with the problem

You can manually force the plugin to do an immediate counter update of a particular post. This you can do using the top bar menu or the edit post screen:

• Update counters for current page/post (Update Counters Now) – reload the page and update the share counter (when using the function from the backend the counter will update once the post is viewed).
• Clear counter history & update counters for current post/page (Delete Counter Information) – remove all counter information for the current post and then call the update (when using the function from the backend the counter will update once the post is viewed). Use this with extreme caution!

Activate the update logging to check manually counter

Update counter logging is a new toolkit that helps identify the counter update problems. The tool logs all requests to social API along with the result. And you can see the used URL and the result for this URL.

To enable the logger go to Sharing -> Share Counter Setup -> Log counter update requests and enable it.

At the same settings screen once you reload a new panel will appear where you can view the logs.

Troubleshooting

The log results show the exact URL used to get the counters, the full API callback, and the raw result you receive. 

All networks except Facebook do not have rates for accessing the value. You will see the exact share value all the time. If it is incorrect probably the problem is with the URL.

Mostly you can experience a problem with the Facebook counter. That is due to the Graph API restrictions. If everything is OK you will see a result like this showing the share values:

{
   "engagement": {
      "reaction_count": 0,
      "comment_count": 0,
      "share_count": 22,
      "comment_plugin_count": 0
   },
   "id": "https://appscreo.com/must-have-social-media-features-for-every-woocommerce-store/"
}

In case of a problem you will see the exact cause:

• (#4) Application request limit reached – you reach the maximum allowed requests to Graph API. Don’t worry – this limit is reset each hour. Usually, the message may appear if you are doing a batch counter update for the entire website (once you install the plugin for the first time or you force a full counter update for the entire site). But if you see it regularly we recommend updating the counter refresh rate.
• Invalid OAuth access token signature – the token key you are using for Facebook in the settings is incorrect or expired
• (#2) Service temporarily unavailable – you don’t have a token filled in the settings.

Still having problems

If you’ve gone through everything above and are still not seeing social share counts, refer to our support team. We will be happy to help.