Open Graph Checker

An Open Graph checker shows you what people will see when your page is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack or X, before anyone shares it. Our tool reads the og: and twitter: tags on the page you enter, builds a preview card from them, confirms that the share image actually loads and flags anything missing. A broken preview with no picture or the wrong headline makes a link look untrustworthy, so a two-minute check before a campaign or a newsletter goes out is well worth it.

How to use the Open Graph checker

1. 1 Sign in and open the toolLog in to your free account and choose the Open Graph Checker from the tools list.
2. 2 Enter the exact page addressPaste the full URL you plan to share, such as a blog post or product page. The checker tests that page, not just your homepage.
3. 3 Look at the preview cardCheck the image, title, description and site name in the preview. This is roughly what people will see in their feed or chat.
4. 4 Fix the flagged tagsWork through any fails first, especially a missing or unreachable og:image, then add the optional tags that are flagged as warnings.
5. 5 Recheck and refresh the platform cacheRun the check again after publishing, then ask Facebook or LinkedIn to re-scrape the page so they drop the old preview.

What Open Graph tags are and what this checker reads

The Open Graph protocol was created by Facebook to turn any web page into a rich object in a social feed. It is now the common language for link previews: LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams, iMessage, Discord and many others read the same tags. Each tag is a meta element in the page head with a property attribute such as og:title and a content attribute holding the value.

Our Open Graph checker fetches the page and reads og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, og:type and og:site_name, along with twitter:card. When an Open Graph value is missing, the preview falls back to the Twitter tags and then to the page title and meta description, so you can see what a platform is likely to show even on a page that was never set up for sharing.

Why social share previews matter for traffic and search

Open Graph tags are not a Google ranking factor. Google builds search results from your title element, headings and page content, and uses its own systems to pick images. But shares drive real visits, and links with a clear image and headline attract far more clicks than a bare URL or a preview showing a cookie banner. More visits, more mentions and more links from people who discover you through shares all help in the long run.

Previews also matter in places you may not think of as social media: links pasted into WhatsApp groups, Teams chats, Slack channels and email clients that display rich previews. For many UK small businesses, a customer forwarding a link on WhatsApp is the most common share of all.

How to read the Open Graph test results

The Open Graph protocol itself lists og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url as the basic properties. In practice, title, description and image decide whether a preview looks right, so our checker treats those three as essential and the rest as recommended.

• og:title, og:description and og:image: a fail if missing.
• og:url, og:type and og:site_name: a warning if missing.
• Share image loads: we request the og:image URL and report a fail if it returns an error or cannot be reached.
• Share image over HTTP: a warning if the image address uses http:// rather than https://, because some platforms skip insecure images.
• Twitter / X card: a warning if twitter:card is missing.

How to add Open Graph tags in WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace

In WordPress, both main SEO plugins output Open Graph tags automatically. In Yoast SEO, check that Open Graph is switched on under Settings, Site features, then set a per-post image and text in the Social tab of the Yoast box when editing. In Rank Math, use the Social tab inside Edit Snippet. If no image is set, both plugins fall back to the featured image, so always add one, and set a sensible default image in the plugin settings for pages without one.

Shopify themes output Open Graph tags from the product or page title, the SEO description and the featured image, and you can set a default social sharing image in the theme settings. Wix lets you set a social share image and text for each page in its SEO settings, under the Social share tab. Squarespace uses each page's social image setting, falling back to the site-wide social sharing logo set in its marketing or SEO settings.

If your preview shows two different titles or images on different platforms, the page probably has duplicate tags, often from a theme and a plugin both adding them. View the page source, search for og:image and remove whichever source you do not need.

Choosing a share image that works on every platform

Use a landscape image at 1200 by 630 pixels and use an absolute URL that starts with https://. Relative paths such as /images/share.jpg are not reliably understood by platforms, and an image blocked by robots.txt, a login or hotlink protection will not load for them either. Our checker requests the image from outside your site, so a fail on the image check usually means the platforms cannot reach it either.

Keep text on the image short and well away from the edges, because LinkedIn, WhatsApp and X crop differently. A file that is large in kilobytes may be skipped by some messaging apps, so compress it before uploading. Adding og:image:width, og:image:height and og:image:alt helps platforms render the image on the first share and helps people using screen readers.

Twitter Card tags and how X uses your Open Graph data

X uses its own set of tags, known as Twitter Cards, but it reads Open Graph tags as a fallback for the title, description and image. The one tag it really needs from you is twitter:card, which chooses the layout. The value summary shows a small square thumbnail beside the text, while summary_large_image shows a wide image above it, which is what most sites want for articles and products.

You only need twitter:title, twitter:description or twitter:image if you want X to show something different from other platforms, for example a tighter headline. Our checker accepts twitter:card written with either the name or the property attribute, and if your Open Graph title, description or image is missing, the preview uses the matching Twitter tag instead. If the twitter:card warning appears, add a single tag to your head template and every page is covered.

Open Graph best practice for a small business site

Set a good default image for the whole site, then override it on the pages you share most: your homepage, key services, products and blog posts. Write og:title as a clear headline without your brand name repeated, since og:site_name shows the brand separately. Keep og:description to one or two sentences that make someone want to tap.

Make og:url match the canonical address of the page so shares of the same page with different tracking parameters are counted together. After changing tags, run the Open Graph checker again, then use the Facebook Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn Post Inspector to refresh their cached copies before you post.

Examples you can copy

<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Example Bakery">
<meta property="og:title" content="How We Make Our Sourdough Every Morning">
<meta property="og:description" content="A behind-the-scenes look at the 36-hour process behind our best-selling loaf.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.example.co.uk/blog/sourdough-process/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.co.uk/images/sourdough-share.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="Freshly baked sourdough loaves cooling on a wooden rack">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_GB">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:title" content="Example Bakery | Artisan Bread in Brighton">
<meta property="og:description" content="Sourdough, pastries and celebration cakes baked fresh every day in Brighton.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.example.co.uk/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.co.uk/images/share-default.jpg">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

Common mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions