Some clients may experience a warning when entering their website URL on Facebook or Instagram, with the social media platforms stating messages like The website URL provided is not valid. Please enter a correct URL and try again. While we cannot control or fully know how Facebook chooses to generate these warnings, here are some tips to help you troubleshoot, as we know how frustrating this can be.
Troubleshooting tips
First step
- It's important that you thoroughly review your site and make sure it complies with the Facebook Community standards, https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/. Read through the standards and ensure you believe it complies before contacting Facebook.
Further steps - contacting Facebook
You could also reach out to Facebook using the following methods to try to resolve the issue:
- Facebook link debugging tool - you can enter the URL of your website into this tool and a warning banner should appear saying that Facebook cannot review your site. Click the 'let us know' link and complete the form to let them know that you have reviewed your site and that you believe their decision to block you is a mistake.
- Facebooks ads live chat - if you have a Facebook ads account and have paid for ads you may have access to live chat. Using this service can alert a real person to your problem and tell them you wish to places ads but can’t because your site is blocked.
- Give feedback/report a problem - when logged in to Facebook, you can click the dropdown icon in the top right corner and click Give feedback>Something went wrong and send a detailed description of the problem and why you believe you should not be blocked.
- The Oversight Board - the Oversight Board offers an appeals process to give people a way to challenge content decisions on Facebook or Instagram. If you have already requested that Facebook or Instagram review one of its content decisions and you disagree with the final decision, you can appeal to the board.
We have found that there are also third-party companies offering services to try to identify why your site may be getting blocked and then to take you through the process of getting unblocked. If the above tips do not help, this may be an option that you wish to investigate.