Free Open Graph & Social Preview Checker

What are Open Graph tags?

When someone pastes a link to your website into Facebook, LinkedIn, X, WhatsApp, Slack or a text message, the app reads a few hidden tags on your page to build the preview: a picture, a headline and a short description. These are Open Graph tags (they start with og:). X also reads its own twitter: tags, and uses the Open Graph ones when those are missing.

Without them, apps guess: the preview may show your logo cut in half, a cookie banner's text, or no picture at all. A clear picture and headline give people a reason to click a shared link.

For the tags Google reads (title tag, meta description, noindex), use the Meta Tag Checker.

The tags that matter

• og:title: the headline of the preview. If it is missing, most apps use your page title.
• og:description: one or two sentences under the headline. If missing, Facebook usually uses your meta description. LinkedIn often hides it.
• og:image: the picture. The most important one. Use a full address starting with https://, a JPG or PNG, about 1200 × 630 pixels (a 1.91 to 1 rectangle), under 5 MB, with important text kept away from the edges.
• og:url: the main address of the page, so shares of slightly different addresses count together.
• og:type (usually “website” or “article”), og:site_name (your business name) and og:image:alt (a text description of the picture): optional but useful.
• twitter:card: tells X which card to show. summary_large_image gives the large picture; summary gives a small square one.

Here is what a complete set looks like in a page's code (your SEO plugin or website builder writes this for you):

<meta property="og:title" content="Wedding Cakes in Denver | Rose Bakery">
<meta property="og:description" content="Custom wedding cakes, tastings on Saturdays.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://rosebakery.com/img/share.jpg">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://rosebakery.com/wedding-cakes">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

How to set your share picture and text

Each result above has a “How to fix this” link to the right section. The quick version:

• WordPress: an SEO plugin writes the tags. In Yoast SEO, edit the page and open the Social tab of the Yoast box. In Rank Math, open Rank Math at the top right of the editor, then its Social tab (Facebook and Twitter). Click Update.
• Wix: in the Editor, Pages panel → ⋯ next to the page → Social share: upload an image and edit the title and description. Then Publish.
• Squarespace: in Pages, click the page's gear icon and open the Social Image tab. Blog posts have the same option in the post settings.
• Shopify: Online Store → Preferences → Social sharing image for the home page and the default. Products use their first product image, and blog posts their featured image. The title and description come from Search engine listing.

Fix og:title, og:description, og:url and og:type

• WordPress (Yoast): the Social tab uses your SEO title and description unless you write different ones there. Yoast adds og:url and og:type for you. Rank Math: the same, in its Social tab. If you have no SEO plugin, WordPress adds no Open Graph tags at all: installing one is the simplest fix.
• Wix: Pages → ⋯ → Social share. Wix adds og:url and og:type for you.
• Squarespace: uses the page's SEO title and SEO description (page settings → SEO), and adds the other tags for you.
• Shopify: uses the Search engine listing title and description. Most themes add the other tags; if yours doesn't, the theme's developer can add them.
• og:url pointing to another site or page: usually a leftover from a template, a copied site or a hard-coded tag in custom code. Look in your site's custom code or header settings (Wix: Settings → Custom Code; Squarespace: Code Injection; Shopify: your theme's code).

Fix og:image (the share picture)

1. Make the picture: about 1200 × 630 pixels, JPG or PNG, under 5 MB. A photo of your work, your shop or your team usually works better than a logo.
2. Set it: Yoast or Rank Math Social tab (WordPress), Social share (Wix), Social Image (Squarespace), Social sharing image or the product image (Shopify), as above. Also set a default image for the whole site: Yoast's Settings → Site basics → Site image, Rank Math's Titles & Meta → Global Meta → OpenGraph Thumbnail, or Shopify's Preferences.
3. If the image “answers not found”: it was moved or deleted (often after a redesign or a move to a new host). Upload it again and set it again.
4. If it is a short address like /img/share.jpg: change it to the full address, https://yourbusiness.com/img/share.jpg. Plugins and builders do this for you; this usually only happens with hand-written code.
5. Then refresh the platforms' copy (below), or old shares keep the old picture.

Fix twitter:card for X

• WordPress: Yoast adds twitter:card with the large image for you. In Rank Math, Titles & Meta → Global Meta → Twitter Card Type: choose Summary Card with Large Image.
• Wix, Squarespace, Shopify: most sites and themes add it for you. If the checker finds it missing, it can be added as custom code in the page head: <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"> (Wix: Settings → Custom Code; Squarespace: Code Injection → Header; Shopify: your theme's theme.liquid). Custom code needs a paid plan on some builders.

I fixed it, but Facebook still shows the old preview

Each platform keeps its own copy of your page's preview, sometimes for weeks. To make them read the page again:

• Facebook (and Instagram links, Messenger): open Meta's Sharing Debugger (search for “Facebook Sharing Debugger”), log in, paste your page address, click Debug, then Scrape Again. It also lists any problems Facebook itself sees.
• LinkedIn: open LinkedIn's Post Inspector, paste your address and click Inspect. That refreshes LinkedIn's copy.
• X: we don't know of a public X tool for this today. X reads pages again from time to time; the preview usually updates within about a week. Adding something like ?v=2 to the end of the address makes it a new link with a fresh preview.
• WhatsApp, Slack, iMessage: they read the page when the link is pasted, but may keep an older copy for a while; adding ?v=2 helps here too.

These official tools are the final word for their platform: our checker shows what your page says, and they show what the platform actually picked up.

What this checker does, and its limits

• Reads the HTML of one page from our server, following up to 5 redirects, then sends one request to the og:image address to see whether it answers.
• Our checker can't yet read the image's file type and size; it shows the size only when your page states it (og:image:width and og:image:height). Opening the image in your browser shows the rest.
• The previews are our own drawings, not the platforms' own, and we don't load your image on this page. Each platform changes its layout from time to time.
• It doesn't run the page's scripts. Social platforms don't either, so tags added by scripts are usually missed by them too.
• Reads pages up to 2 MB. Introduces itself as FlatRateChatBot; some sites block automated checks, and then the result says so instead of guessing.
• If the page redirects somewhere unexpected, the Redirect Checker shows each step.
• Up to 60 checks a day from one connection, and 30 a day of the same website. No report is saved: we keep only the counters for these daily limits and anonymous usage counts.
• Also free: the Broken Link Checker tests every link on your pages.
• Also free: the Sitemap Generator makes an XML sitemap of your pages and checks the one you have.
• Also free: the Google Maps Embed Generator makes the code to show your business on a Google map on your website.
• Also free: the WhatsApp Link Generator makes WhatsApp, click-to-call and text links, website buttons and a QR code.
• Also free: the Google Review Link Generator turns your Google review link into a QR code, a printable sign and ready-to-send messages.
• Also free: the Website Down Checker checks from our server whether a website answers right now, and why not.
• Also free: the Redirect Checker shows every redirect a web address goes through, step by step.
• Also free: the SSL Checker checks that your site opens securely on https and shows its certificate details.
• Also free: the Robots.txt Checker reads your robots.txt and shows whether it blocks Google, AI crawlers or your sitemap.
• Also free: the Robots.txt Generator makes a robots.txt file for your website and checks it as you type.
• Also free: the Website Accessibility Checker scans one page for common accessibility problems, like images without alt text and form fields without labels.
• Also free: the Meta Tag Checker shows the title, description and other tags Google reads on a page, with a search preview.

Questions