You spend an hour writing a LinkedIn post, paste in the link, and wait for the preview to appear. Nothing. Or worse — the wrong image shows up, the title is garbled, and the description is a random snippet of page text that makes no sense out of context.
You're not alone. Broken link previews are one of the most common — and most fixable — problems in digital marketing. This guide walks through the eight most frequent causes, shows you exactly what to look for, and lets you test your own URL with the Open Graph Preview tool embedded below.
What Are Open Graph Tags?
When you share a URL on LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, Twitter/X, iMessage, or almost any social platform, that platform doesn't just display the raw link. It fetches the page in the background, reads a set of hidden HTML tags called Open Graph (OG) tags, and uses them to build a rich preview card showing a title, description, and image.
Open Graph was originally developed by Facebook and published as an open protocol in 2010.[1] It has since become the universal standard for link previews across nearly every platform. A typical set of OG tags in a page's HTML <head> looks like this:
<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="A short description of this page." />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/preview.jpg" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/your-page/" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
When these tags are present, correct, and reachable, previews work beautifully. When any one of them is missing, wrong, or blocked, the preview breaks — sometimes silently.
New to the terminology? See the Link Shortening Glossary for plain-English definitions of Open Graph tags, social previews, canonical URLs, and related concepts.
Test Your URL Right Now
Before diving into the eight causes, use the tool below to check any URL you're working with. It fetches your page the same way LinkedIn and Facebook do and shows you exactly what tags are present, what's missing, and what the preview will look like.
Try it free, no signup
Open Graph Preview
See exactly how your link looks when shared.
The 8 Most Common Reasons Your Link Preview Is Broken
1. The OG Tags Are Missing Entirely
The most common cause. Many websites — especially older ones, custom-built tools, and app pages — simply don't have Open Graph tags in their HTML. When a social platform can't find them, it improvises: it might pull the page <title>, grab the first paragraph of body text, or show no image at all.
What to look for: View your page's source (right-click → View Page Source in most browsers) and search for og:title. If you find nothing, the tags aren't there.
How to fix it: Add the five core tags listed above to your page's <head> section. If you're on WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math handle this automatically. On most website builders (Squarespace, Webflow, Wix), there's a dedicated SEO or social sharing settings panel per page.
2. The OG Image Is Too Small
Platforms enforce minimum image dimensions and will refuse to display images that fall below them. LinkedIn, for example, requires images to be at least 1200 × 627 pixels for the large card format.[2] Facebook recommends the same dimensions and will downgrade to a small thumbnail — or no image — if yours is smaller.
Common culprits: a company logo (usually square and small), a favicon, or a stock photo that was compressed down before uploading.
What to look for: The preview tool will show you the resolved image and its dimensions. A correctly sized OG image for modern platforms is 1200 × 630 pixels (a 1.91:1 aspect ratio).
How to fix it: Create a dedicated social sharing image at 1200 × 630 pixels. This is different from your page's hero image — it's specifically designed to look good cropped into a horizontal card. Tools like Canva have pre-built templates at exactly this size.
3. The Platform Has Cached an Old Preview
LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms aggressively cache link previews — sometimes for days or even weeks. This means that even after you fix your OG tags, the old (broken) preview keeps appearing because the platform hasn't re-fetched the page.
This is one of the most frustrating scenarios because the fix is already deployed, but nothing seems to have changed.
How to fix it: Each major platform provides a scraper or debugger tool that forces a re-fetch:
- LinkedIn: Use the LinkedIn Post Inspector — paste your URL, click "Inspect," and it will scrape fresh data and clear the cache for that URL.
- Facebook / Meta: Use the Meta Sharing Debugger — paste your URL and click "Scrape Again."
- Twitter/X: Cache clears more frequently, but you can trigger a refresh by appending a harmless query parameter (e.g.,
?v=2) the first time, then removing it.
Make cache-busting your first step after any OG tag change.
4. A Redirect Is Getting in the Way
If your URL redirects to another URL before the final page loads, some platforms read the OG tags from the intermediate URL rather than the final destination — or fail to follow the redirect at all.[3]
This is especially common with:
- Short links (which redirect to a long destination URL)
- Old URLs that 301-redirect to new ones
- Links with tracking parameters that pass through a redirect layer
- Affiliate links routed through multiple hops
A redirect chain — where URL A redirects to URL B which redirects to URL C — compounds the problem significantly. Each hop is another opportunity for the scraper to give up or read the wrong page.
How to fix it: Use the shortest possible redirect path (ideally a single hop direct to the final page). Ensure the final destination page has correct OG tags. If you're using a link shortener, check whether your platform supports OG tag passthrough or custom social preview overrides — many link management platforms let you set OG data directly on the short link itself, bypassing whatever is on the destination page.
5. The OG Image Is Too Large (File Size)
While dimensions matter, file size matters too. Facebook's official guidance recommends keeping OG images under 8MB,[4] but in practice, images over 1–2MB frequently cause timeouts when scrapers try to fetch them — especially on slower servers or shared hosting.
A 4K screenshot, an uncompressed PNG exported from design software, or a raw photo from a camera can easily be 5–15MB despite having correct pixel dimensions.
How to fix it: Compress your OG image before uploading. Tools like Squoosh (Google's free browser-based image compressor) or TinyPNG can reduce file size by 60–80% with no visible quality loss. Aim for under 500KB for fast, reliable loading on all platforms.
6. The Wrong MIME Type Is Being Served
A MIME type is the label a server attaches to a file that tells the browser (or scraper) what kind of file it is. If your server sends an image with the wrong MIME type — for example, labeling a JPEG as text/html — scrapers will reject it and show no image, even if the file itself is perfectly valid.[5]
This sounds obscure, but it happens more often than you'd expect, particularly with:
- Images served from a CDN with misconfigured headers
- Files uploaded without proper extensions (e.g.,
previewinstead ofpreview.jpg) - Servers that default all unknown files to
application/octet-stream
What to look for: The Open Graph Preview tool will show you the content type returned for your OG image. It should be image/jpeg, image/png, image/gif, or image/webp. Anything else will cause problems on at least some platforms.
How to fix it: If you control the server, configure it to serve images with the correct Content-Type header. If you're using a CMS or CDN, re-upload the image with the correct file extension and verify the served headers using your browser's developer tools (Network tab → click the image request → Headers).
7. OG Tags and Twitter Card Tags Are in Conflict
LinkedIn and Facebook use Open Graph tags. Twitter/X uses its own system called Twitter Cards.[6] Most platforms will fall back to OG tags if Twitter Card tags are absent, but when both sets of tags are present and they conflict — different titles, different images — some platforms get confused and render the wrong one, or switch between them unpredictably.
Common conflict scenario: A developer added OG tags pointing to a landscape banner image, and later a marketing team member added Twitter Card tags pointing to a square logo. LinkedIn now shows the square logo instead of the banner.
How to fix it: Audit both sets of tags together. For most pages, the og: and twitter: equivalents should be identical unless you have a deliberate reason to show different content on different platforms. If you want consistency, set Twitter Card tags explicitly to match your OG tags:
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Your Page Title" />
<meta name="twitter:description" content="A short description." />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://example.com/images/preview.jpg" />
8. LinkedIn's Inspector Has Its Own Quirks
LinkedIn's scraper behaves differently from Facebook's and Twitter's in a few notable ways:
- It doesn't follow all redirects. LinkedIn's scraper will sometimes stop at the first redirect and read tags from the intermediate URL, not the final page.[2]
- It respects
X-Frame-Optionsand somerobots.txtrules. If yourrobots.txtdisallows the LinkedIn crawler (Linkedinbot), previews will fail. - Image CDN authentication. If your OG image is behind any kind of authentication, token, or signed URL that expires, LinkedIn will successfully scrape it the first time but fail on subsequent attempts when the token expires.
- It's slower to clear its cache. Even after using the Post Inspector to force a re-scrape, LinkedIn posts that were already published with the old preview may not update — this is by design.
How to fix it: Run your URL through the LinkedIn Post Inspector before publishing, not after. Treat it as a preflight check every time you share an important link. Make sure your robots.txt allows Linkedinbot. Serve your OG images from a public, permanent URL with no authentication or expiring tokens.
Quick-Reference Checklist
Use this before sharing any important link:
| Check | Pass condition |
|---|---|
| og:title present | Yes |
| og:description present | Yes |
| og:image present | Yes |
| og:url present and canonical | Matches the final destination |
| Image dimensions | At least 1200 × 630 px |
| Image file size | Under 1 MB (ideally under 500 KB) |
| Image MIME type | image/jpeg, image/png, or image/webp |
| Redirect hops to final page | 1 or fewer |
| No expired/authenticated image URLs | Yes |
| LinkedIn Post Inspector cleared | Run before publishing |
| Twitter Card tags consistent with OG tags | Yes |
Why This Matters Beyond Aesthetics
A broken preview isn't just a cosmetic problem. Research consistently shows that posts with rich image previews receive significantly higher engagement than text-only link posts. LinkedIn's own data indicates that posts with images receive 98% more comments than those without.[2] On Facebook, link posts with optimized previews consistently outperform those without in both organic reach and paid ad performance.
If you're running any kind of content distribution — blog posts, landing pages, product pages, press releases — fixing Open Graph tags is one of the highest-return 30-minute investments you can make.
References
[1] Meta Platforms, Inc. (2010, ongoing). The Open Graph Protocol. ogp.me. https://ogp.me/
[2] LinkedIn. (2024). Share on LinkedIn — Developer Documentation: Best Practices. LinkedIn Developer Platform. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/share-on-linkedin
[3] Fielding, R., Nottingham, M., & Reschke, J. (2022). RFC 9110: HTTP Semantics, §15.4 (Redirection). Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#section-15.4
[4] Meta for Developers. (2024). Sharing Best Practices for Websites & Mobile Apps. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices/
[5] Freed, N., & Borenstein, N. (1996). RFC 2046: MIME Part Two — Media Types. IETF. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2046
[6] X Corp. (2024). Cards — X Developer Platform. https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/cards/overview/abouts-cards
Last updated: May 2026. See also: Link Shortening Glossary — Open Graph / OG tags, Social preview, Canonical URL, Redirect chain.