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I have a Google+ Share button for each article on my website.

At the moment, when I try to use it, Google+ uses an unrelated image in my document (probably the first one in the document above a certain size) as the thumbnail shown in the feed.

I'd like to specify a thumbnail url to use instead. I used the +1 button tool to generate the proper meta tags, but it just doesn't work. It's still using that unrelated image.

Anyone got it working?

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Did you modify your html element as it says down the bottom of the page? Do you want to give us a link to where you've put it so we can check it? – paulmorriss Sep 28 '11 at 13:20
Yes, I did! Example article: indievault.it/2011/09/28/… – pt2ph8 Sep 28 '11 at 13:24
By the way, one thing to note is that the thumbnail is not included in the article's page as an img tag. The thumbnail for that article I linked should be this one (as shown in the homepage) indievault.it/wp-content/uploads/thumbs/2011/09/… I don't think this should be a problem, but I'm saying it just to make sure. – pt2ph8 Sep 28 '11 at 13:25

2 Answers

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The reason that your specified thumbnail image is not being picked up is because Google+ doesn't like small images (<170px width).

If you link to the full-size image instead of the thumbnail and let G+ do the resizing it will work. I've tested your code with a larger image from your site and it seems to work.

Reference:

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Thanks, this worked! – pt2ph8 Sep 30 '11 at 11:57
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Write an IMG tag with the right thumb at the beginning of the body and make the the css to display:none

Don't forget that the article thumb may be cached already so it will work only for further articles and/or after cache expiration.

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Tried that too. If you check the HTML in the page I linked in an earlier comment you'll see an img tag with the thumbnail URL and display:none. Not working :( Even tried to add itemprop="image" to it, but still not working. It's not the cache either, as I tested it with old (2010) articles. – pt2ph8 Sep 28 '11 at 13:35
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Found this : The reason that the +1 Button is not pulling the image marked with the itemprop is because your image resides outside of your itemscope element. If you specify an image inside your article, the +1 Button will pick it up. SOURCE Jenny Murphy, Google employee : link – jflaflamme Sep 28 '11 at 13:48
Thanks a lot, but what does "inside your article" mean? Do I have to add an attribute to the article's div or something, and then add the itemprop inside this div? – pt2ph8 Sep 28 '11 at 13:49
Explanations here – jflaflamme Sep 28 '11 at 13:54
I tried that, but still nothing (added itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article" to the body tag and then the image with itemprop="image") – pt2ph8 Sep 28 '11 at 14:16
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