My share counts aren't accurate. How do I fix them?

Seeing share counts that don’t match your expectations is very stressful! Please use the guide below to determine what might be happening and how to get your counts back to normal.

1. Are the counts turned on?

Please check your inline and/or floating button settings under the Share Count Settings heading to ensure counts are enabled. We know, this is WordPress 101 stuff, but you’d be surprised how often this can be the issue.

While you’re here, make sure you haven’t set a minimum for counts or totals – if the shares are below these values, they won’t appear.

2. What is your setting for refresh interval?

Social Rocket’s default refresh interval is 3600 seconds, or one hour. You can check this number in Social Rocket > Settings > Advanced. If you’d like to update your counts more frequently, you can change this value, though we must warn you this could slow down your site.

If your refresh interval is an hour and the counts aren’t updated, an hour may not have passed since the counts updated last. In that case, give it a bit more time to see whether they update on their own.

3. Is Share Count Rescue configured correctly? (PRO)

If you have changed your URLs in any way, such as changing permalinks, adding SSL, changing domains, etc., Share Count Rescue (part of Social Rocket Pro) will allow you to combine any shares of your previous URLs with counts for the current URLs.

Social networks are very picky about the format for URLs, so if a single character is missing or different (even down to the trailing slash at the end of the post title), your previous counts may not come through.

4. Have you forced a manual recalculation? (PRO)

Social Rocket Pro allows you to force share counts for a particular URL to be updated on demand. To do this, edit the page or post in question and scroll down to the Social Rocket Settings (below the main editor box). Click the “Recalculate counts for this post” button to tell Social Rocket to immediately check for new shares, then refresh the post/page on the front end to see whether the counts are accurate.

You can also use a query string to see exactly what counts Social Rocket is getting from each API and force a manual recount at the same time.

5. Have you checked the APIs?

There are several methods you may be using to check your share counts. Social Rocket uses the official share count API for each network that offers counts, so what the API says is what the buttons will show.

Facebook

To check Facebook’s share count, go to the Share Debugger and paste in your full URL including http or https. The next screen will show you a lot of information, including the number of engagements.

Twitter

If you are using Open Share Count, add your full URL including http or https to the end of this string, then hit Enter to load in your browser:

http://opensharecount.com/count.json?url=

If you are using TwitCount, add your full URL including http or https to the end of this string, then hit Enter to load in your browser:

https://counts.twitcount.com/counts.php?url=