My Website Preview Looks Wrong on Social Media
When you share your website link on Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, or in a text message, the preview that appears looks wrong. Maybe it shows the wrong image (or no image at all), a weird title, a missing description, or just an ugly plain link with no preview.
This matters more than you think. Social media previews are often someone's first impression of your business. If your link looks broken or unprofessional compared to other websites, people are far less likely to click it. It makes your site look amateur or suspicious.
The good news is that fixing this is relatively simple — your website just needs a few specific tags that tell social media platforms what image, title, and description to show.
Error Messages You Might See
Common Causes
- Missing Open Graph tags — Your website doesn't have the special HTML tags (called Open Graph tags) that Facebook and LinkedIn use to create previews
- Missing Twitter Card tags — Twitter/X uses its own set of tags for previews, and your site doesn't have them
- Image too small or wrong format — The preview image needs to be at least 1200x630 pixels. Smaller images get cropped or ignored
- Social media cached old version — You fixed the tags but Facebook/Twitter still show the old broken preview from their cache
- No image specified — Without a specified image, social platforms pick a random image from your page — often a tiny icon or the wrong photo
How to Fix It
- Add Open Graph tags to your pages — Add og:title, og:description, og:image, and og:url meta tags to the head section of your HTML
- Add Twitter Card tags — Add twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image meta tags
- Create a proper preview image — Design an image that's 1200x630 pixels showing your brand, product, or a relevant graphic
- Clear social media caches — Use Facebook's Sharing Debugger (developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/) and Twitter's Card Validator to refresh your previews
- Test every important page — Check the preview for your homepage, product pages, blog posts, and any page you'd commonly share
Real developers can help you.
Krishna Sai Kuncha
Experienced Professional Full stack Developer with 8+ years of experience across react, python, js, ts, golang and react-native. Developed inhouse websearch tooling for AI before websearch was solved : )
Jared Hasson
Full time lead founding dev at a cyber security saas startup, with 10 yoe and a bachelor's in CS. Building & debugging software products is what I've spent my time on for forever
prajwalfullstack
Hi Im a full stack developer, a vibe coded MVP to Market ready product, I'm here to help
Pratik
SWE with 15+ years of experience building and maintaining web apps and extensive BE infrastructure
Richard McSorley
Full-Stack Software Engineer with 8+ years building high-performance applications for enterprise clients. Shipped production systems at Walmart (4,000+ stores), Cigna (20M+ users), and Arkansas Blue Cross. 5 patents in retail/supply chain tech. Currently focused on AI integrations, automation tools, and TypeScript-first architectures.
Antriksh Narang
5 years+ Experienced Dev (Specially in Web Development), can help in python, javascript, react, next.js and full stack web dev technologies.
PawelPloszaj
I'm fronted developer with 10+ years of experience with big projects. I have small backend background too
Matthew Jordan
I've been working at a large software company named Kainos for 2 years, and mainly specialise in Platform Engineering. I regularly enjoy working on software products outside of work, and I'm a huge fan of game development using Unity. I personally enjoy Python & C# in my spare time, but I also specialise in multiple different platform-related technologies from my day job.
legrab
I'll fill this later
Kingsley Omage
Fullstack software engineer passionate about AI Agents, blockchain, LLMs.
Describe what's wrong in plain English. No technical knowledge needed.
Get HelpFrequently Asked Questions
Why does Facebook show an old/wrong preview even after I fixed it?
Facebook caches (saves) your link preview the first time someone shares it. To force Facebook to refresh it, paste your URL into the Facebook Sharing Debugger (developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/) and click 'Scrape Again.'
What size should my preview image be?
Use 1200x630 pixels for the best results across all platforms. This size works well on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and messaging apps. Use JPG or PNG format, keep it under 5MB, and make sure important content isn't at the edges since different platforms crop differently.