Bad Response Code - URL returned a bad HTTP response code.
11

We are having problems with Facebook previews, our service shortens a URL and upon click/tap performs a redirect to the real destination. At the moment, however, Facebook extracts the preview of some of our URLs, but not others. Honestly, I don't understand the underlying scheme. I did some checks with the Facebook debugger to try to understand what's happening and the debugger says: Bad Response Code - URL returned a bad HTTP response code. Response Code - 403

here is a URL that returns a preview: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjo.my%2F6cwmjl

here instead is a URL configured in the same way that returns an error: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjo.my%2Fhqd3n8

Massimo
Asked about 3 months ago
Massimo

Other useful information: 1. we are currently only experiencing the behavior described above with one of our domains, the others seem to work correctly 2. in an attempt to understand what was happening I created a small HTML page that does not use any part of our redirection engine because it is served directly by the web server, so the page is accessible from the browser, also in this case the Facebook debugger returns a Response code 403

February 28 at 11:50 AM
Selected Answer
1

Report here, hoping that FB will resolve it quickly: https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/1085796049211789/

March 3 at 8:52 AM
Massimo
1

Hi Facebook!

Please address our problem. We spend advertising money on your platform so it is really disappointing for us to get this lack of support.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.autoindustriya.com%2Fauto-industry-news%2Fjetour-auto-ph-now-accepting-reservations-for-t2-4x4.html

March 3 at 5:59 PM
Brent
Massimo

Please report here https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/1085796049211789/

March 3 at 6:29 PM
1

I have sample problem. Please help me fix this https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgomec.vn%2Fbo-trao-doi-nhiet-dang-tam-giang-dem-alfa-laval-model-moi-t21%2F&locale=vi_VN

March 19 at 7:24 AM
Huy
3

Same problem here as well. We run our own servers so we know nothing is blocking facebook. Even turned off the firewall for a test and same result. Other websites on the same server have no issues. It seems limited to just one domain. robots.txt has no facebook entries. In fact when I look at our server logs, our server is in fact serving the page and responding 200 ok so I can't figure out where facebook is getting a 403 (access denied) response from.

March 1 at 3:03 PM
TC
TC

Also we are not using a shortcut to run the test. a direct url to a live page. I have a post on this issue: https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/7171398006273128

March 1 at 3:04 PM
3

I think it's a problem with the Cloudflare and Facebook network.

March 1 at 3:12 PM
Luis Manuel
Elvedin

But i've turned off my CDN and Caching stuff which is really the only connection I have to Cloudflare since I use siteground as a host and still have the issue.

March 1 at 3:52 PM
TC

We don't run Cloudflare

March 1 at 6:42 PM
Massimo

We don't use cloudflare either

March 1 at 6:55 PM
4

Hi Massimo, we are having EXACTLY the same problem since yesterday. We do a redirect similar to a shorte service. Until now all good, but now is broken and almost all links are failing. Any luck?

For more information our pages are hosted in CloudFlare.

February 29 at 11:27 AM
Luis
Massimo

Have you enabled CloudFlare's "I'm under attack" option? I have done numerous tests and have come to the conclusion that it is a FB bug, but it is practically impossible to report a bug to FB.

February 29 at 12:59 PM
Elvedin

Same issue with us from around the same time. It went from some posts being ok but most returning a 403 to now all of our posts returning a 403. We're hosted by siteground and also use CloudFlare and actually had an issue with the Under attack option but I even tried to turn off all our caching stuff and no luck. Other things I've tried: Turning off everything on the site from caching to plugins to anything. Returning from a backup when things still worked Using articles that were posted succesfully before Checking the robots.txt file, checking if we're blocking any IPs or anything really.

Another weird factor from my access logs is that the crawler is reaching the site succesfully yet I still cant get the sharing to work:

31.13.127.17 izdvojeno.ba - [01/Mar/2024:20:08:49 +0000] "GET /wp-content/uploads/2024/02/mehanicari-air-srbija-bezbjednost-aviosabracaja-je-ugrozena-nase-avione-popravlja-firma-koja-ih-je-do-juce-prala-i-cistila_65d5aa293893c.jpeg HTTP/1.1" 200 44118 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)" | TLSv1.3 | - - 0.000 - 0 NC:000000 UP:-DT cdnreq 69.171.251.2 izdvojeno.ba - [01/Mar/2024:20:02:57 +0000] "GET /wp-content/uploads/2024/02/aircraft-4885805_1280-1000x667-1.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 71655 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)" | TLSv1.3 | - - 0.089 - 0 NC:000000 UP:-DT cdnreq 31.13.103.2 izdvojeno.ba - [01/Mar/2024:19:59:46 +0000] "GET /wp-content/uploads/2024/02/kazino22.jpg.webp HTTP/1.1" 200 31816 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)" | TLSv1.3 | - - 0.000 - 0 NC:000000 UP:-DT cdnreq

March 1 at 3:27 PM
TC

Exactly same results for us as well

March 1 at 6:42 PM
Steven

Hello, Sunday 3-3 24, I noticed this problem today. Some old posts pull up data, new ones only root domain. Sorta glad it's site wide. Please post fix info when you find

March 3 at 12:04 PM