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SEO Analyzer · AI Humanizer · App Icons Generator
Facebook & Messenger link preview

Facebook Link Preview Checker

Paste a public URL to preview the link card Facebook and Messenger will build for it. The checker reads the same Open Graph tags Facebook does, tests the share image, and explains why a preview is missing, wrong or out of date.

Try: a GitHub repo · a page with no tags 10 checks left today

Preview

An approximation of each app’s layout. Apps change their designs and crop images differently.

What to fix

Refresh a cached preview

These results show your page as it is right now. An app that already saw the link may keep showing its older, cached preview until it fetches the page again:

  • Facebook & Messenger: open Meta’s Sharing Debugger, paste the URL and press Scrape Again.
  • LinkedIn: paste the URL into LinkedIn’s Post Inspector to fetch it again.
  • Telegram: send the URL to @WebpageBot in Telegram to update its stored preview.
  • WhatsApp, Discord, Slack & iMessage: there is no public refresh tool. Share the URL with a harmless query string added, such as ?v=2, so it counts as a new link.
  • X: start a new post with the link to see the current card; existing posts keep the card they were published with.

Tags found

Suggested tags

A complete set based on what we found. Replace any placeholder values, then paste it into the page’s <head>, or into your CMS or SEO plugin’s social settings.


          
        

      


            
    

  






  

    

      

        
How Facebook builds a link preview

        
        
Facebook created Open Graph, and its crawler (user agent facebookexternalhit) reads the full set:

        
    
          
  • og:title, og:description and og:image — the card’s title, text and image.
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  • og:url — the canonical address. Facebook goes to that URL and uses its tags, which is why a wrong og:url makes every page share like the homepage.
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  • og:image:width and og:image:height — let Facebook lay out the image on the very first share, before it has downloaded and processed the file.
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  • og:type — usually website or article.
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Messenger uses the same data. The fb:app_id warning shown by Facebook’s Sharing Debugger is about Facebook analytics; it is not needed for a working preview.
        

          
See which of these tags your page has, and what Facebook will show.

          Check a URL
        

      


      

        
Why your Facebook preview is missing or wrong

        

                    
og:url points to another page
Facebook follows og:url and uses that page’s tags. A theme that outputs the homepage address on every page makes every link share as the homepage.

                    
No image on the first share
Facebook may not have processed the image yet. Adding og:image:width and og:image:height lets it show the image straight away.

                    
The image is too small or too large
Facebook ignores images under 200 × 200 px and rejects files over 8 MB. Small images appear as a square thumbnail.

                    
facebookexternalhit is blocked
A firewall, bot protection or hotlink protection that blocks Facebook’s crawler leaves the card empty. Allow facebookexternalhit.

                    
Facebook is showing a cached preview
Facebook keeps the data it scraped. If this checker shows the new tags, use the Sharing Debugger to scrape again.

                  

      


      

        
How to refresh Facebook’s cached preview

        
        
Open Meta’s Sharing Debugger (developers.facebook.com/tools/debug), log in, paste the URL, press Debug and then Scrape Again. Facebook fetches the page and updates the preview for Facebook and Messenger. For many URLs at once, the Sharing Debugger has a batch invalidator.

        
Run this checker first: if it still shows the old tags, scraping again will fetch the old tags too.
      


      

        
The best share image for Facebook

        
        
Use a 1200 × 630 px JPG or PNG (1.91:1). Facebook accepts up to 8 MB, but aim for a few hundred kilobytes; the same image is used by WhatsApp, which is far less tolerant of heavy files. Always include the width and height tags:


<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/share.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
      


      

        
Facebook preview questions

        

                    

            

              
            

            

              
Almost always og:url, or the canonical URL, points to the homepage on every page. Facebook follows og:url and uses the homepage tags. Fix the theme so each page outputs its own URL.

            

          

                    

            

              
            

            

              
Use Meta’s Sharing Debugger: paste the URL, press Debug, then Scrape Again. If this checker still shows the old tags, fix the page first.

            

          

                    

            

              
            

            

              
Facebook processes new images asynchronously. Add og:image:width and og:image:height so it can show the image on the first share.

            

          

                    

            

              
            

            

              
No. The Sharing Debugger warns about it, but it is only used for Facebook analytics. Previews work without it.

            

          

                    

            

              
            

            

              
1200 × 630 px, as JPG or PNG. Images under 200 × 200 px are ignored and files over 8 MB are rejected.

            

          

                  

      


      

        
Check the preview on other apps

        
Every app reads the same Open Graph tags but shows them differently. The checker above previews all of them at once; these pages explain each app’s own rules.

        

          WhatsApp
                    Discord
                    Slack
                    Telegram
                    iMessage
                    LinkedIn
                    Facebook
                    X (Twitter)
                  

        
Seeing the wrong image on every app? Our guide Link Preview Showing the Wrong Image? How to Clear the Cache on Every Platform covers the fixes in one place.

      


      

        
See your Facebook preview before you share the link

        
Check the tags, test the image, and fix the preview in minutes. Free, no signup.

        Check a URL