Open Graph Tags Explained: Control How Your Links Look When Shared
The handful of Open Graph tags that decide your link preview, the right image size, and how to fix stale or broken previews.
When someone pastes your link into WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack or X, the app builds a little preview card: a picture, a headline and a line of text. If you do nothing, the app guesses โ and it often guesses badly, picking a logo, a cookie banner or no image at all. Open Graph tags let you decide what appears.
What Open Graph is
Open Graph is a set of meta tags, originally created by Facebook, that most social and messaging apps now read. They sit in the head of your page and describe it in a way share previews can use. They have no direct effect on Google rankings, but a good preview gets more clicks wherever your link travels.
The five tags every page should have
- og:title โ the headline on the card. It can be a little more conversational than your SEO title.
- og:description โ one or two short sentences. Many apps show only the first line.
- og:image โ the picture. This makes or breaks the card.
- og:url โ the canonical address of the page, so shares of different URL versions are counted together.
- og:type โ usually
website, orarticlefor blog posts.
Add og:site_name for your brand name and, for X, twitter:card set to summary_large_image. X falls back to Open Graph for title, description and image when its own tags are missing.
Getting the image right
- Use 1200 ร 630 pixels (a 1.91:1 ratio). It displays well on nearly every platform.
- Keep file size modest โ under about 1 MB โ so it loads quickly; some apps, including WhatsApp, may skip large images.
- Use a full, absolute URL with
https://. Relative paths often fail. - Keep important text and faces away from the edges; some apps crop to a square.
- Make sure the image is publicly reachable and not blocked by robots.txt or a login.
You can confirm an image URL works and is a reasonable size with the image URL checker.
Why the old preview keeps showing
Apps cache previews, sometimes for days. If you change your tags and still see the old card, the app is showing its stored copy. Facebook and LinkedIn offer debugging tools that force a refresh; other apps update on their own schedule. Adding a version parameter to the image URL (for example card.jpg?v=2) helps the new image get picked up.
Common mistakes
- One generic image and description on every page of the site.
- An
og:urlpointing to the homepage on every page, which can merge all shares into one. - Images that are too small, so the platform shows a tiny thumbnail instead of a large card.
- Tags added by two plugins at once, giving apps two conflicting sets.
Check before you share
Use the free Open Graph preview tool to see the card on Facebook, LinkedIn and X and get the tags to paste. Our guide on checking Open Graph link previews before sharing covers the process step by step. If you still need to create the tags, the meta tag generator includes the social fields.
Related guides
More free tools: browse all our free utility tools, no sign-up needed.
Frequently asked questions
Do Open Graph tags help SEO?
Not as a ranking factor. They improve how links look when shared, which can bring more visits and more people discovering and linking to the page.
What is the best og:image size?
1200 ร 630 pixels works well across Facebook, LinkedIn, X and messaging apps.
Why does WhatsApp show no image?
Often the image is too large, uses a relative URL, or is not publicly accessible. A smaller JPG with an absolute https URL usually fixes it.
Do I need separate Twitter tags?
Only twitter:card is really needed. X uses the Open Graph title, description and image if its own versions are missing.