What are Social Share Counts?
Social networks play an important role in referring traffic to your website, and keeping track of how your website is performing across social media is more than just an ego boost — it establishes credibility, boosts visitor confidence, helps you better understand your website's traffic, influences advertising revenue, and more. The list goes on and on!
At Shareaholic, we understand how important it is to display accurate Share Counts for your content, which is why we work hard to make attractive, easy-to-use tools so you can proudly display those hard-earned shares on your website.
How are Social Share Counts calculated?
The way share counts are calculated varies a bit depending on the social network. Some networks only count the number of unique times a link has been shared, while others include other social actions ('likes', 'shares', even 'comments') in the total. So the best way to interpret the share count number shown is that it represents the most accurate number of quantifiable social actions on the shared URL.
Where do these Share Counts come from?
Shareaholic fetches Share Counts using the official Share Count lookup APIs of each social network. This ensures that the Share Counts are always the most accurate, since they are coming directly from the source. It also allows us to retrieve or recover any shares that may have gone 'missing' in the event of a domain switch, URL structure update or move from HTTP to HTTPS.
Shareaholic does not store any share count data on our servers. Instead, we fetch that information for you in real time (as described above) and display it nicely for you on the page, so you can see all your hard-earned social media progress in one place.
What are these "missing shares"?
Most social networks tally and store share count data pegged to the URL. This means that if the URL changes in any way, such as a switch from HTTP to HTTPS or a move between domains, you're likely to see your share counts take a visible hit, since the social networks will see these new URLs as being completely different from the previous URLs, and assume they have a whole new set of share count data. Fortunately, we have a solution for this!
When you enter your page or post's URL and click 'Analyze URL', we automatically check for both the HTTP and HTTPS version of the entered URL, no matter what version you entered. We tally up whatever we found in the "with Share Count Recovery" column. Even if you don't recall moving from HTTP to HTTPS, you might be surprised what missing shares we find.
What is Share Count Recovery™ Technology?
So it says we found "recoverable shares" for your URL, now what? How do you get these missing shares to display on your page? With Shareaholic's Share Count Recovery™ technology, of course! This technology recovers any missing shares that may have been lost in a HTTPS (SSL), domain or URL change and combines them with any new shares the URL has received since, making sure that all your hard work and social proof is accounted for! Best of all, recovering your social share counts is easy. It takes just a few minutes to enable on your website with an easy flip of a switch. No need to wrestle with code.
Share Count Recovery™ is included with all Shareaholic paid plans and also includes recovery options for situations when you have changed domain names (for example, moving from free.wordpress.com to customdomain.com, or even www.mydomain.com to just mydomain.com)! You do not need to have had Shareaholic Share Buttons installed before your domain, URL structure or SSL switch — you can install Shareaholic on your website at any time and recover your lost shares immediately.
If you're interested in signing up for Shareaholic for Share Count Recovery, but you're not sure what it will be able to recover for you, you've come to the right place! You can use this page to preview how many shares your page will get back with Share Count Recovery!
Which Social Networks does this tool currently support?
This Share Count lookup tool currently supports share count retrieval for Facebook, Pinterest, Buffer, Reddit, VK (VKontakte), Tumblr and Odnoklassniki (OK). X and LinkedIn discontinued their Share Count API, meaning it is no longer possible for any service to retrieve share counts directly from X or LinkedIn. We are looking into alternatives, but for now, this is the reason why X and LinkedIn are not included.
Why can't I see results for my Facebook post/page/image/link?
This service is for looking up URLs that would get shared across social networks, like articles, product pages and websites. It does not support retrieving share counts for any links within Facebook or other social networks.
Troubleshooting Facebook Shares
If your Facebook shares seem "incorrect," there are a few possibilities here. Facebook normalizes shares for pages that declare a canonical URL using either the Open Graph URL or canonical URL metatags. This means they aggregate shares across all URLs that share a canonical URL. If the canonical URL is set incorrectly, you may get back limited share data. You can use the Facebook Sharing Debugger tool to get more information about the data Facebook has for a given URL.
Is there a bookmarklet that I can install to lookup Share Counts as I browse the web?
Yes there is! Use the Share Counts Bookmarklet to lookup share counts for any URL from anywhere on the web. Drag the bookmarklet below to your bookmarks bar. Then, when you’re on a page you want to check share counts for, simply click the bookmarklet:
Are there Share Buttons available that I can install on my website?
Yes, absolutely! Get the award-winning Shareaholic Social Share Buttons for your website.
Can I display official Share Counts on my website?
Yes, absolutely! You can install Shareaholic Social Share Buttons which integrate official Share Counts and feature a no-code template builder. For example:
<div class="shareaholic-canvas"
data-app="share_buttons"
data-services="pinterest"
data-link="https://shareaholic.com"
data-theme="round flat"
data-size="large"
data-counter="badge-counter">
</div>
Or, if you need more granular code control, sites and pages that have Shareaholic.js installed can use the following JavaScript code to display official Share Counts.
Note: Facebook share counts are part of our premium Share Count service and requires a paid plan.
Example - To display official Facebook and Pinterest Share Counts:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{ services: ['facebook', 'pinterest'] },
(counts) => {
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts').innerText = counts.total;
},
);
</script>
<div id="shr-share-counts">-</div>
Example - To display official Facebook Share Counts:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{ services: ['facebook'] },
(counts) => {
document.querySelector('#fb-share-counts').innerText = counts.facebook;
},
);
</script>
<div id="fb-share-counts">-</div>
Example - To display official Facebook, Reddit and Pinterest Share Counts only if the sum is greater than 50:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{ services: ['facebook', 'pinterest', 'reddit'] },
(counts) => {
if (counts.total > 50) {
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts').innerText = counts.total;
}
},
);
</script>
<div id="shr-share-counts">-</div>
Example - Display official Facebook Share Count for shopify.com:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{ services: ['facebook'], url: 'https://www.shopify.com/' },
(counts) => {
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts').innerText = counts.total;
},
);
</script>
<div id="shr-share-counts">-</div>
Example - Display official Facebook Share Count for shopify.com and google.com individually:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
urls = ['https://www.shopify.com/', 'https://www.google.com/'];
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{
services: ['facebook'],
url: urls,
},
(counts) => {
console.log(counts);
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts-1').innerText = counts[urls[0]].total;
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts-2').innerText = counts[urls[1]].total;
},
);
</script>
<div id="shr-share-counts-1">-</div>
<div id="shr-share-counts-2">-</div>
Example - Display the official Facebook Share Count total for a given set of URLs:
<script>
(function(s,r){;s[r]=s[r]||function(){(s[r].q=s[r].q||[]).push(arguments)}})(window,'Shareaholic');
urls = ['https://www.shopify.com/', 'https://www.google.com/'];
Shareaholic(
'getShareCounts',
{
services: ['facebook'],
url: urls,
},
(counts) => {
total = Object.keys(counts).map((key) => counts[key]).reduce((p, c) => p + c.total, 0); // works with IE
// total = Object.values(counts).reduce((p, c) => p + c.total, 0); // newer; does not work with IE
document.querySelector('#shr-share-counts-total').innerText = total;
},
);
</script>
<div id="shr-share-counts-total">-</div>
