When you paste a link into WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn or X, the app reads a few hidden tags in your page — the Open Graph (OG) tags — to build the preview card. If they are missing or wrong, you get a bare link, a random image, or an old title.
The tags you need
<meta property="og:title" content="Your page title">
<meta property="og:description" content="One or two sentences about the page">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/share-image.jpg">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">You can generate all of these, filled in for your page, with the Meta Tag Generator, then check the result in the Open Graph Preview tool before you share.
Common reasons the preview doesn't show
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| No og:image tag | Add one with a full https:// URL, not a relative path |
| Image too large (WhatsApp) | Keep the share image under about 300 KB — compress it with the image compressor |
| Wrong image shape | Use 1200 × 630 px; resize with the social media resizer (Website → Open Graph) |
| Image blocked | Make sure robots.txt or a firewall doesn't block the image or page for bots |
| Old preview keeps showing | Apps cache previews; refresh the cache (see below) |
| Tags added by JavaScript | Put OG tags in the HTML itself; most apps don't run JavaScript |
How to refresh an old preview
- Facebook & WhatsApp: open Meta's Sharing Debugger, paste your URL and press Scrape Again. WhatsApp may still show an old cached preview on devices that already saw the link; adding
?v=2to the URL gives a fresh preview. - LinkedIn: use LinkedIn's Post Inspector to re-fetch the page.
- X: previews refresh on their own after a while; a query string also forces a new one.
WordPress sites
SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math add OG tags automatically. Set a default social image in the plugin settings and a custom one per post. If two plugins both add OG tags, turn one off — duplicate tags confuse apps.
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