How does Facebook Sharer select Images and other metadata when sharing my URL?

Question

When using Facebook Sharer, Facebook will offer the user the option of using 1 of a few images pulled from the source as a preview for their link. How are these images selec

Answer 1

From my experience, the http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php does not use meta tags. It uses the string you pass. See below.

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?s=100&p[title]=THIS IS MY TITLE&p[summary]=THIS IS MY SUMMARY&p[url]=http://www.MYURL.com&&p[images][0]=http://www.MYURL.com/img/IMAGEADDRESS

The meta tags work with Facebook's developer like/send buttons, as does the other Open Graph info. So if you use one of Facebook's actual elements like the comments and such, that will all tie into the Open Graph stuff.

UPDATE: There are two ways to use the sharer * note the ?s versus the ?u value in the query string
1 ==> STRING: http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?s + content from above
~~> Will pull info from the string.
2 ==> URL: http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=url where url equals an actual url
~~> Will scrape the page provided in the url value
~~> You can test test the values here: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug