How to check a link preview
- Copy the exact URL you plan to share, including the path. Check the specific product page or article rather than your homepage, because each page has its own tags.
- Paste it above and press Check preview. The checker downloads the page like a link-preview crawler: raw HTML, no JavaScript, no cookies.
- Look at the preview tabs to see roughly how the link will appear on WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
- Work through “What to fix.” Errors stop the preview from working, warnings make it unreliable or wrong on some apps, and tips are improvements.
- Fix the page, then check again. When the checker shows the right result but an app still shows the old one, refresh that app’s cache using the steps in the results.
A practical example
An online shop notices that every product link shared in WhatsApp groups shows the same banner from the homepage. The checker shows two issues on a product page: og:url points to a different page (the theme hard-codes the homepage address) and an og:image that is the site-wide banner. After the theme is fixed to output each product’s own URL and photo, the checker shows the product image and name. Because WhatsApp had already stored the old preview, the shop tests by sharing …/product/blue-backpack?v=2, which displays the new preview straight away.
What Open Graph tags are and how previews are built
When you paste a link into a chat or a post, the app visits the page in the background and looks for a handful of <meta> tags in its <head>. The standard set, called Open Graph, was introduced by Facebook and is now read by WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, iMessage, Telegram and most other apps that show link cards. X reads its own twitter: tags first and falls back to Open Graph.
A complete, minimal set looks like this:
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/guides/packing-list">
<meta property="og:title" content="The Carry-On Packing List We Actually Use">
<meta property="og:description" content="Everything for a week away in one bag, with a printable checklist.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/packing-list-1200x630.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="A packed carry-on suitcase seen from above">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">If a tag is missing, apps improvise: they may use the page’s <title> or meta description, pick a random image from the page, or show a bare link. Improvising is exactly how the wrong image ends up in a preview. The checker shows which tags exist and what each app is likely to fall back on.
If you still need to write the title and description themselves, the Meta Tag Generator drafts search-friendly versions you can reuse for og:title and og:description.
Not sure which of these your page has? Check it in a few seconds.
Check a URLWhat this checker can verify, and what it cannot
| It verifies | It cannot see |
|---|---|
| Whether the page loads publicly and which redirects it follows | What an app has already cached for your URL |
Every Open Graph and Twitter Card tag in the raw HTML, and whether it sits in the <head> | Tags added later by JavaScript (crawlers do not see these either) |
| Whether the share image downloads, is really an image, and its format, pixel size and file size | Firewall or bot-protection rules that treat each app’s own crawler differently from ours |
Common mistakes: relative URLs, wrong og:url, duplicate tags, name= instead of property= | Content that is only shown to logged-in visitors or specific countries |
| An approximate preview for four apps | Each app’s exact, current design and cropping |
The checker requests pages with a user agent that identifies itself and includes facebookexternalhit, as many link-preview checkers do, because some sites only serve full tags to known crawlers. If your site uses aggressive bot protection, allow the crawlers of the apps you care about: facebookexternalhit, WhatsApp, LinkedInBot and Twitterbot.
Why share previews go wrong
No image at all
No og:image, an image URL that returns 403 or 404, a relative path, or an SVG file. The issue list names which one applies.
The wrong image
A missing og:image makes apps choose one themselves, or the first of several og:image tags is a logo or default banner. Duplicate tags usually come from a theme and a plugin both adding them.
Every page looks like the homepage
og:url, or the canonical URL, points to the homepage on every page, so Facebook fetches the homepage tags instead.
An old title or image
The page is fixed but the app is showing a cached preview. If the checker shows the new tags, the problem is the cache, not your page.
A tiny thumbnail instead of a big card
The image is under about 600 × 315 pixels or far from the 1.91:1 shape, so apps fall back to a small square thumbnail.
Works on Facebook, not on WhatsApp
A very large image file is the most reported cause. Compress the share image to a few hundred kilobytes and share the URL with ?v=2 to test.
WhatsApp problems have their own quirks. Our guide Why Is My WhatsApp Link Preview Image Not Showing? walks through them in order.
Limitations
- Only public http and https pages on standard ports can be checked. Pages on localhost, private networks, IP addresses or behind a login are refused.
- The first 2 MB of HTML and up to 9 MB of image data are read. That is more than preview crawlers generally need.
- Pages that only work after JavaScript runs are read as their raw HTML, which is what preview crawlers see.
- Results reflect one request from our server at one moment. Sites that vary content by location, device or crawler may show apps something different.
- 10 free checks per day per IP address.
Share preview questions
Related guides and tools
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