How to unblock your URL domain on Facebook
(June 2024)
Jake Spitzack
Staff Writer
It took more than six months and several handfuls of hair, but I finally cracked into Facebook support and the (wrongly placed) block on my business’s website URL was recently lifted. Outlined below is much of the process I went through to get the issue resolved. I hope it can help others experiencing a similar issue!
How it began
Social media is obviously a very useful tool for businesses to sell products, promote services, and connect with the community, and not being able to share your URL can keep you out of thousands of dollars. For our newspaper company, we were suddenly unable to share any of our articles on Facebook, which not only halted all growth to our following but made it appear as though we were unprofessional, or worse: lacked credibility.
For us, the issue began shortly after we switched website hosting providers from Network Solutions to Bluehost and created a new website on WordPress.
We began getting the above notice when making Facebook posts that included our URL, even though we had never violated any Facebook community standards. The first order of business was scouring the web for help where, inevitably, I found the infamous Facebook Debugger (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/). I pasted my URL in the debugger, but it didn’t work due to the URL “violating community standards.” I submitted messages in the corresponding feedback box at least a dozen times over the next two months, but it felt overwhelmingly clear that the messages were simply floating out into the ether, never to be seen by a real Facebook representative.
I’ll keep the ranting on this post to a minimum despite how frustrating it was to battle this issue for so long when it so negatively impacted our business and was ultimately caused by a *spoiler* “false positive by Facebook automation.” In fact, I will even admit that I may have increased our chances of being wrongly blocked because of sub-optimal posting practices, such as pasting our article URL links in Facebook posts rather than posting our articles directly from our website provider, and including possibly unnecessary hashtags in posts. I recommend becoming familiar of the best posting practices if you aren’t already.
Anyways, after weeks of trying the debugger and never hearing back from Facebook support, I decided to dig deeper and found that there’s a chance Facebook will provide some live support if you throw some money their way. I created several ads that included my (blocked) URL, but they could never progress past the “draft” stage due to the issue. On top of that, I couldn’t appeal the ads for review because they were never technically “rejected” since they couldn’t be published past the “draft” stage.
On one occasion, I successfully boosted an old post including our URL. However, I did that on a Friday afternoon and when I returned to work Monday morning I found that it didn’t in fact work. Only 51 cents of the budget had been used before the post was removed.
By this point I was thoroughly discouraged — how could a social media giant like Facebook, which thousands of businesses and organizations rely on, be able to wrongly block a URL and not have a way to resolve it in a timely manner? Going round and round between the confusing meta business suite and business manager, I eventually stumbled upon a tiny “get help” link at the bottom of the billing and payment page in business settings. From there, I was able to select vague options for what my issue was and get on a live chat with a real representative!
I was extremely glad to finally actually get my issue in front of a real representative, but unfortunately the joy was short-lived. The rep (and the dozen I contacted after in hopes they’d be more helpful) told me they can only address issues with payments and that they would “escalate my case” of the blocked domain to the correct team. Case after case was closed with no resolution to the blocked domain – I always got the same type of message in my support inbox from “Laura.” Hey though, at least they were able to refund the 51 cents.
We even created an entirely new domain and Facebook page to try to circumvent the issue. Unsurprisingly, the new domain was still somehow blocked.
The Solution
Whether it was due to luck, sheer persistence on my end, or enough time had simply passed, one day my account overview (https://www.facebook.com/business-support-home/) suddenly showed about a dozen “closed” cases. They corresponded to the cases I had opened when contacting the payment support specialists on live chat. My account overview also now showed a “Still need help?” box – to which my brain nearly exploded after seeing.
Unfortunately, I’m unsure why all the cases populated at once instead of one at a time when they were each “closed.” Either way, it seems contacting the payment support specialists was what eventually made these cases appear in my account overview.
Upon clicking “Contact support” I was brought to a new site (https://www.facebook.com/business-support-home/contact-support?source=business_help_center_support) where I could submit a case.
I submitted my case under the issue of “something else” because my account technically had no issues — it took a few tries in order to get the prompt to choose to live chat, but eventually I was able to get it. The rep actually ended up calling me and using a screen sharing program (webex) to confirm that my website was safe and that the URL couldn’t be included in any Facebook posts. I was a little suspicious about the screen sharing process but had only been contacted by the rep through my Facebook support inbox and in Messenger in response to cases I submitted so I ultimately decided it was safe, which thankfully it was.
For the first time in months, I thought the issue was actually going to be resolved. The rep even told me they would personally reach out within 48 hours to confirm it was fixed. But, that didn’t happen…. A few days later, the case in my account center said “Action required,” but there was no prompt for me to do anything. Shortly after, it was closed like the other cases.
Scraping up any remaining faith I could, I opened another case or two in this fashion and the same thing kept happening (although I was never asked again to do a screen share, or hop on a phone call ).
What finally did the trick for me was creating a case for my business Facebook page under the selection of “request a verified badge.”
Same as before, I soon noticed the case said “action required” but I didn’t have any prompts to do anything, and when requesting an update on the case I never heard back. However, the case must have gotten in front of the right people because I came in to work a few days later and had a email from Facebook support saying that the domain had been blocked due to a false positive by Facebook automation and that the block had been lifted.
To be honest, it still doesn’t feel quite real that the issue is resolved even though I’ve now made several posts on Facebook that include our URL. I’ll probably always have a little bit of fear that this will happen again even though I’m taking measures to ensure it doesn’t. Overall, I’m beyond relieved to put this issue behind me, and really hope this article can help others going through a similar struggle!
Good luck!
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