Facebook hell

Facebook has been wreaking havoc with duplicate URLs on many sites, including ours. I get many requests like this:

http://sitename.com/index.php?fb_xd_fragment=
http://sitename.com/?fb_xd_fragment=
http://sitename.com/f17/harmonic-bal...fb_xd_fragment

The common fix for this, listed all over the place is listed on many sites, here's one example:

Facebook fb_xd_fragment Problem – .htaccess Solution | Paul O'Flaherty

Here's the fix listed on these sites:
#Redirect For Added FB Fragment
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^fb_xd_fragment=.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com\/$1? [R=301,L]

In addition to the duplicate URLs, VB and Facebook's CSS seem to interfere with each other when the fb_xd_fragment is at the end of the URL. The VB page will load and render, and a second or two later the entire page goes blank (the forum's background image layer is elevated above all layers so that's all you see).

Now, if I implement that fix it, when the fb_xd_fragment rewriterule kicks in some browser continuously reload the page (hundreds of 301s in the logs). This does not happen when vbseo is turned off and removed from .htaccess. It doesn't happen all the time with all browsers, I can't make heads or tails of it.

The majority of the time it happens with IE versions 7 and lower, but I cannot duplicate it with IE7 myself. I do not have the option of turning off Facebook in our VB installation, nor can I ignore IE7 and earlier browsers (due to our audience they make up about 9% of our users).

I need help, either with .htaccess or VBSeo rewrite rules to fix this. We're seeing a drop in traffic due to these users abandoning the site.

Update... I had to post a 2nd thread, as apparently THIS site put in the same .htaccess fix and the "fb_xd_fragment" in my previous post title is bringing up the very same problem I mentioned: the page comes up blank!

Probably the best thing to do is ignore it at your site level, and tell google to ignore that parameter in webmaster tools. You can't fix external sites, and having 100s of matches for redirects like this will add massive load to your server with time (every file within every page will test against said rule)

I can't ignore it at the site level, using the code you have in your .htaccess and that I also used from similar sources (which serves up only the background image on vbulletin pages). I can't serve up blank pages or 404s to potentially 9% of users using the same fix you have here every time they hit a Like button. I can't use a proper 301 in .htaccess with vbseo overriding it.

Even when I try to handle this without .htaccess and solely with this code added to vbseo.php it doesn't resolve it:

if (isset($_REQUEST['fb_xd_fragment'])) {
$new_uri = str_replace("?fb_xd_fragment","",$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: $new_uri");
exit();
}

.... because it gets into an infinite 301 loop.

Unfortunately, when 9% of our users are IE7 users, and the one complaining the loudest is a paying advertiser... I need to find a real solution.

Also, Google's webmaster tools don't help me when it comes to MSN, Bing and Yahoo.

Bing has a webmaster area as well, and powers msn and yahoo engines now. I truly feel this is the best way. You shouldn't have to fix what you didn't break.

If you're ending up in a loop, you're not stripping the param from the url, or the request var is looking past the GET and hitting a cookie or other server variable request.

It might be wise to do a print_r of the request vars when a link comes in like that.

Hello,

you can use the rewrite rule quoted in your post (put it right after "RewriteEngine on" line)

Doesn't work as noted in previous post.

This is what happens:

XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:07 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:12 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:15 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:20 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:27 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:28 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:29 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"
XXXXXXXXXX - - [02/Feb/2012:03:19:30 -0600] "GET /f79/roush-tvs-blower-looks-like-winner-115206/?fb_xd_fragment HTTP/1.1" 301 233 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)"

I have no other rules except vbseo in my .htaccess. Often it happens with Windows Mobile smart phones since a great many of them are still using a variant of IE7 mobile. I guess I'm going to have to rewrite some code in VB to use the new Facebook APIs.

If you don't have "=" in those URLs, you need to replace this:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^fb_xd_fragment=.*$

with:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^fb_xd_fragment.*$

I've been using it without the "=" in the rewrite rules. Problem didn't go away. Its happening now. Trying some other things and will update status.

Can you please provide temporary ftp access via the support ticket so that I can check it? There must be a way to have it redirected via .htaccess.

Thank, but I've resolved it this afternoon, have to use some specific rules for specific browsers.