Open Graph tags: control how your links look when shared

Open Graph is a set of meta tags, created by Facebook and now used by almost every platform, that tell social networks and messaging apps how to display a link. LinkedIn, X, Slack, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord and Pinterest all read them.

The essential Open Graph tags

<meta property="og:title" content="Waterproof Trail Running Shoes">
<meta property="og:description" content="Grippy, waterproof and light. Free returns for 60 days.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/img/og-trail-shoes.jpg">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/trail-shoes/">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Example Co">

Image size and format

• 1200 × 630 pixels (a 1.91:1 ratio) works well across platforms.
• Keep important text and logos in the centre; some platforms crop to a square.
• Use JPG or PNG under about 5 MB (smaller is faster).
• Use a full absolute URL with https://.
• Add og:image:width, og:image:height and og:image:alt so platforms can lay out the card before downloading the image and describe it to screen readers.

Twitter / X cards

X reads Open Graph tags, but it also has its own card tags. The one you need is:

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

This makes X show a large image instead of a small thumbnail. If twitter:title, twitter:description and twitter:image are missing, X falls back to the Open Graph values.

Do Open Graph tags help SEO?

Not directly. Google doesn't use them as a ranking signal. But they make shared links far more clickable, which brings visitors, and more people seeing and sharing your content can lead to links and mentions over time.

Common problems

1. No og:image, so platforms pick a random image from the page, or none.
2. Relative image URLs like /img/share.jpg instead of the full address.
3. Image too small, which shows as a tiny thumbnail.
4. Old preview still showing after you changed the tags. Platforms cache previews; use Facebook's Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn's Post Inspector to refresh them.
5. The same image and title on every page, usually from a theme default.
6. Image blocked by robots.txt or hotlink protection.

Check your link previews

Enter a page in the checker on this page to see how it will look when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and messaging apps, which tags are missing, and whether the image loads at a good size. To write all the tags at once, use the meta tag generator.