Preview My Link

See your link preview before you post

A free Open Graph checker. Paste a URL and it reads the tags social platforms actually see, shows you the card for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack and more, and tells you exactly what to fix.

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Not public yet or blocked? Paste its HTML instead

What is Open Graph?

The Open Graph protocol is a small set of meta tags in a page's <head> that tells other sites what your page is about. Facebook published it in 2010 and the spec still lives at ogp.me. Every tag starts with og:, which is where the shorthand "OG tags" comes from.

When someone pastes your link into a post or a chat, that platform fetches your page, reads those tags, and builds a card from them. Open Graph tags are the only say you get in what that card looks like.

Miss them and the platform guesses. It might grab your logo instead of your article image, pull text from a cookie banner, or show a bare blue link. A post with a proper card takes up far more room in a feed than a bare link, and that difference shows up in your click-through rate.

How this Open Graph tester works

  1. It fetches your page's raw HTML, the same version a social crawler receives.
  2. It reads the Open Graph and Twitter card tags, falling back to your page title and meta description exactly as the platforms do.
  3. It shows you each platform's card and flags anything missing, any text that will be cut off, and any image that's the wrong size.

Nothing is stored, there's no account, and there's no limit on how many URLs you check. If a page isn't published yet or sits behind a login, use the paste option under the URL box instead and you'll get the same report.

The OG tags every page needs

Copy this into the <head> of your page and replace the values. Eight lines cover every platform.

Recommended tags
<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://yoursite.com/share-image.png">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="What the image shows">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://yoursite.com/page">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Your site">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
og:title
The headline of the card. Keep it under 60 characters or it gets cut off. It doesn't have to match your page title, and a sharper version often earns more clicks.
og:description
One or two sentences below the title. Under 160 characters is safest, and some layouts hide it entirely, so never put essential information here alone.
og:image
The preview image, and the part people actually notice. It must be a full URL starting with https://.
og:image:alt
A short description of the image for anyone using a screen reader.
og:url
The canonical address of the page, so shares of tracked and untracked versions count as one.
og:type
What kind of page it is. Use website for most pages and article for posts and news.
og:site_name
Your brand name, shown above the title in Slack and Discord.
twitter:card
The card layout on X. Set it to summary_large_image for the full-width image; without it you get a small thumbnail.

You don't need twitter:title, twitter:description or twitter:image. X falls back to the og: versions and only needs its own tags when you want different wording there.

How your link looks on each platform

Every platform reads the same tags, so one correct set covers all of them. What differs is how each one draws the card, and those differences are why a preview can look right in one place and wrong in another.

  • Facebook shows the image, then your domain in small caps, then the title and a single line of description. It caches aggressively and is the least forgiving when it can't reach your image.
  • X draws your title over the bottom of the image and hides the description completely on the large card. Without twitter:card you get a small square thumbnail instead.
  • LinkedIn shows the image with the title beneath it and drops the description entirely, so your title has to carry the whole message.
  • Slack and Discord show the most: site name, title, description and image together. Both use og:site_name, and Discord tints the card's left edge with your theme-color.
  • WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage show a compact bubble where the image dominates and the text is small, so avoid fine print in your image.
  • Pinterest and Reddit read the same tags, and Pinterest also uses og:image as the pinnable image.

The previews above approximate each of these. Check the tightest one first: if your title survives LinkedIn and X, it will survive everywhere else.

Open Graph debugger: previews that won't update

When the tags are right but the preview still isn't, it's nearly always one of these.

  • The platform cached the old version. This is the most common cause by far. Facebook and LinkedIn hold a preview for days.
  • The tags are injected by JavaScript. Crawlers read raw HTML and don't run scripts, so they never see them. Put the tags in the HTML your server sends, or add them at build time.
  • The image is behind a login, a firewall or a bot filter. Open it in a private window to confirm a stranger can load it. Cloudflare's bot protection blocks social crawlers more often than people expect.
  • The image URL is relative. /share.png means nothing to a crawler. Use the full address.
  • You used name where property belongs. Open Graph tags use property="og:title"; only the Twitter tags use name.
  • Two sets of tags are on the page. A theme and an SEO plugin both writing og:image is common. Search your page source for duplicates.

Clearing a cache is the one thing a third-party tool can't do for you, because only the platform can re-fetch its own copy. Facebook's Sharing Debugger has a Scrape Again button, LinkedIn's Post Inspector refreshes on inspect, and Pinterest has a URL debugger. X retired its card validator and never replaced it, so add ?v=2 to the link to force a fresh fetch there.

Open Graph image size and checklist

The image is the part of the preview people see first, and it's the tag that goes wrong most often.

  • The recommended Open Graph image size is 1200 × 630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio. Those dimensions look right everywhere.
  • Save it as a JPG or PNG under 5 MB. Anything narrower than 600 pixels may be dropped or downgraded to a thumbnail.
  • Keep text and logos near the center. Several apps crop the edges or show a square version.
  • Use a full https:// URL, never a path like /images/share.png.
  • Make sure the image loads without a login and isn't blocked for bots by your server, CDN or firewall.
  • Change the filename when you change the image. It's the fastest way around a stubborn cache.

Frequently asked questions

What are Open Graph tags?

Open Graph tags are meta tags in your page's head that control how the page appears when its link is shared. The four that matter most are og:title, og:description, og:image and og:url. Platforms read them instead of guessing at your page content.

Why isn't my Open Graph image showing?

The usual causes are a relative image path instead of a full https:// URL, an image under 600 pixels wide, or a server that blocks social crawlers. Paste the og:image URL into a private browser window to confirm it opens as an image without a login.

I changed my OG tags. Why do I still see the old preview?

Platforms cache previews, sometimes for days. Facebook's Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn's Post Inspector will re-fetch the page on demand. For everything else, adding a query string like ?v=2 makes the link look new and produces a fresh preview.

What size should my og:image be?

Use 1200 × 630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio, as a JPG or PNG under 5 MB. Keep text and logos away from the edges, because some apps crop the image or show it as a square thumbnail.

Do I need Twitter card tags if I already have Open Graph tags?

Only one. X falls back to og:title, og:description and og:image, so the twitter: versions are optional. The exception is twitter:card, which you should set to summary_large_image to get the full-width image instead of a small thumbnail.

Why does my LinkedIn preview look different from Facebook's?

LinkedIn drops the description and shows only the image and title, while Facebook shows the domain, title and a line of description. Both read the same tags. If your preview reads poorly on LinkedIn, the fix is a title that stands alone without the description supporting it.

Do Open Graph tags help SEO?

Not directly. They aren't a Google ranking factor. What they affect is how many people click your link when it's shared, and the traffic and links that follow from that do matter. Treat them as part of distribution rather than on-page SEO.

My OG tags are on the page. Why does the checker say they're missing?

They're probably added by JavaScript after the page loads. Most social platforms read only the original HTML and don't run JavaScript, so they miss the tags too. Put the tags in the HTML your server sends, or add them at build time. The site may also have returned a bot check page instead of the real one.

What is an Open Graph checker?

An Open Graph checker, also called a validator or tester, fetches a page the way a social crawler does and reports which OG tags it found. A good one also shows the card, because a tag can be present and still produce a poor preview when the text is too long or the image is the wrong shape.

Can I check a page that isn't published yet?

Yes. Open "Paste its HTML instead" below the URL box and paste the page source. The checker reads the tags without fetching anything, which also works for staging sites and pages behind a login.

Is this Open Graph checker free?

Yes, with no account and no limit on how many URLs you check. Nothing you enter is stored.