Twitter cards pass verification but not showing in tweets

[gwdesignuk]

A few months ago my twitter cards were working beautifully for me and they were really easy to set up. Then one day they were suddenly showing up with incorrect formatting, despite no changes at my end. After reading lots of conflicting information I eventually got it all to work again, though I had to change the size of the image and the file name before it showed properly. Then a couple weeks later no image at all is showing in tweets.

When I check the domains on the twitter card validator it all looks correct with a large image summary but when tweeted nothing appears, though on a desktop browser there is a space where the image should be. I’ve even tried forcing the refresh by changing the twitter card image url to include .jpg?555 so that twitter checks for the actual image, but even that isn’t working.

It all seems to be terribly hit and miss, but more usually miss. Does anybody know where I’m going wrong here?

Two urls to check are https://greatwebdesign.uk and https://colourmanagementpro.com

Thanks

Ashley

[andypiper]

I’ve just checked both of the domains and posted the links in Tweets, and the cards are showing up OK for me. I can’t see anything wrong. The most common causes I’ve seen for images not showing are a robots.txt file blocking access to the file, an image size issue, or a stale cache issue (the latter usually clears up within a couple/max 7 days). Otherwise, please read and carefully check through the FAQ on cards troubleshooting. If there’s something that you’re convinced is missing or not answered there, please provide more details. Thank you.

[gwdesignuk]

Thanks for checking that @andypiper

All I can tell you is that whenever I check myself, either on desktop or Android the image is not visible in my twitter feed. On the Mac this is the case whether using tweetbot or directly via the website using a web browser and I’ve tried various things like resetting the account cache. On Android I’m using the Twitter app.

I don’t actually have robots.txt files on either of these domains but simply include “index, follow” meta tags on individual pages. I’ll continue to search, but it’s a mystery why it has suddenly become invisible.

The first attachment shows what a tweet looks like in my feed after simply adding the full url. The second attachment shows just the URL when I try to delete it afterwards.

[gwdesignuk]

Actually here is another live example from yesterday. https://twitter.com/gwdesignuk/status/786277961607544832

The first image shows how it appears here in my feed with the big empty space, while the second shows the URL when I try to delete it. I have all ad blockers disabled on Twitter.

[gwdesignuk]

OK I’ve done some more digging and think I’m closer to finding out what is going on here.

Below shows how it appears in tweetbot with no image. After doing some more checks I’ve found it looks fine in Chrome and FireFox on Mac. It’s actually showing up fine now on Android as well.

I’m having problems with Safari on Mac and I wonder if Tweetbot is using Safari for previews somehow. This may well be related to Sierra.

[andypiper]

Tweetbot cannot show cards, as they are not available to third-party clients. Cards will show in the Twitter apps for iOS and Android, and on the web. Your cards are working fine for me (including the examples you’ve shown above) in Chrome on your timeline for me, also on Sierra.

Note that ad blockers may restrict loading of some Twitter domains or URLs, so that can sometimes also be a cause of this kind of behaviour.

[gwdesignuk]

OK thanks for the clarification. It looks like this is limited to Safari in Sierra. Hopefully just for me and not others.

UPDATE: I’ve found the culprit and it’s Adguard AdBlocker 2.4.10 that is blocking the summary cards in Safari, even when specifically disabled for Twitter. Only disabling it entirely allows the image to appear.

Curiously the images do show up in Chrome using the same extension despite the ad blocker being enabled there.

[andypiper]

Ah, great! Good to know, I was about to post that I verified the cards were showing in Safari on Sierra for me. Glad you’ve figured this out!

[andypiper]