News link thumbnail displaying old image and Bing API?
We’re seeing odd behavior when creating a News link in SharePoint Online:
Add a News web part to a page. Use the Add > News link option of the News web part.Paste a link to a web public page with an og:image metadata tag that includes a valid URL to an image. This page should also have been indexed by Bing search engine. Here’s one to test with: https://bellinghampubliclibrary.org/summer-readingAccept the default settings and select the Post button.Go to the public page and change the image so the og:image metadata tag value updates to the new image URL. Go back to the News web part and repeat steps 1-4 above.
Our experience is the old image for the public website is pulled in during the process of creating the second News link. We thought maybe this was a Bing search engine caching issue, but when we pull up the cached version of the page, the new image is being displayed. We used Bing’s webmaster tools and requested a recrawl of the page even though the cached version is showing the new image to be sure Bing’s cache was updated.
When you right click and copy the image URL for the thumbnail during the News link creation process above, the URL seems to hint that maybe it’s going out to Bing’s API to get the thumbnail:
https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.c4B_14v2FtlHM9FJ3RVJlQEsBl&pid=Api
This is the image that should be displaying:
This is the image that’s being shown (an image that was on the page months ago):
So, we have three questions:
How does the News link process obtain the thumbnail?Why are we getting an old version of the thumbnail when the live and cached versions of the page are showing the new image?How do we fix it? We know we can override the image and manually upload the correct image. But we’d like to make it easier on content editors and have the current image pulled in without extra steps.
Thanks for any tips you can send our way!
We’re seeing odd behavior when creating a News link in SharePoint Online: Add a News web part to a page. Use the Add > News link option of the News web part.Paste a link to a web public page with an og:image metadata tag that includes a valid URL to an image. This page should also have been indexed by Bing search engine. Here’s one to test with: https://bellinghampubliclibrary.org/summer-readingAccept the default settings and select the Post button.Go to the public page and change the image so the og:image metadata tag value updates to the new image URL. Go back to the News web part and repeat steps 1-4 above. Our experience is the old image for the public website is pulled in during the process of creating the second News link. We thought maybe this was a Bing search engine caching issue, but when we pull up the cached version of the page, the new image is being displayed. We used Bing’s webmaster tools and requested a recrawl of the page even though the cached version is showing the new image to be sure Bing’s cache was updated. When you right click and copy the image URL for the thumbnail during the News link creation process above, the URL seems to hint that maybe it’s going out to Bing’s API to get the thumbnail: https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.c4B_14v2FtlHM9FJ3RVJlQEsBl&pid=Api This is the image that should be displaying: This is the image that’s being shown (an image that was on the page months ago): So, we have three questions: How does the News link process obtain the thumbnail?Why are we getting an old version of the thumbnail when the live and cached versions of the page are showing the new image?How do we fix it? We know we can override the image and manually upload the correct image. But we’d like to make it easier on content editors and have the current image pulled in without extra steps. Thanks for any tips you can send our way! Read More