Link preview showing the wrong image or title? How to fix it
Find out why a link preview shows the wrong image or title, fix your page’s Open Graph tags, refresh Facebook and LinkedIn previews, and test short links.
A link preview usually shows the wrong image or title because the page’s tags are wrong, or because the app saved an older copy of the page. Most apps build previews from the page’s Open Graph tags, such as og:title and og:image. Fix the tags first, then ask the apps that kept the old copy to read the page again: Meta’s Sharing Debugger for Facebook, Post Inspector for LinkedIn.
This guide follows a made-up community theater, the Eastgate Players, whose page for its new show previews with last year’s poster and title. It covers pages you can edit and short links you manage. If someone else runs the page, ask them to fix its tags.
Find out where the preview comes from
The preview comes from the page the link finally opens, after any redirects. A short link has no preview of its own: Links redirects it to the saved destination and has no preview settings. The title you give a link in the Links app never appears in a preview.
Check the page’s Open Graph tags
Open the page in a private window, view its source and search for og:. The Open Graph protocol asks for four basic tags: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url, the page’s own permanent address. The theater’s corrected tags:
<meta property="og:title" content="Harbor Lights: our new show" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Five evenings in April at Eastgate Hall." />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.org/img/poster-harbor-lights.jpg" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.org/harbor-lights/" />Look for these faults:
| Fault | Fix |
|---|---|
There’s no og:image tag |
Add one, or Facebook guesses and may pick another image |
| The tags were copied from an older page | Update every og: tag for this page |
og:image reuses last year’s file name |
Rename the new image and update the tag |
og:image is a partial path, such as /img/poster.jpg |
Use the full https:// address, as the Open Graph examples do |
| The page or image needs a sign-in | Use a public page and image: preview tools aren’t signed in |
og:url points at the homepage |
Set it to this page’s own address |
| Your edit doesn’t show in the source | Clear your site’s cache |
The theater’s page was copied from last year’s, so og:title named the old show, and the new poster had replaced poster.jpg under the same name.
Refresh previews that apps have cached
Fixing the page doesn’t change previews that apps already saved.
For Facebook, paste the page address into Meta’s Sharing Debugger. Meta’s sharing guide says it shows the tags the crawler read and fetches the page again. Images are cached by address and won’t update unless the address changes, which is why the theater’s replaced poster stayed old. Meta also suggests og:image:width and og:image:height, so the image loads properly on the first share.
For LinkedIn, enter the address in Post Inspector and check the preview. LinkedIn’s help says the refresh only affects new posts. Existing posts keep their old preview, so the theater publishes a new post.
For other apps, such as WhatsApp or X (Twitter), check the preview in a draft before you send it.
Test the short link the way a preview tool sees it
The tools check the address you enter. If you share a short link, such as reunified.link/k7m2x9qa, run it through them too.
Links applies your rules to every visit, preview tools included. A country rule can match a tool that connects from that country, and a tool that doesn’t identify as a phone or tablet counts as a desktop. So a preview can show a rule’s destination: give every destination correct tags. The routing guide explains how rules match.
If the tool shows a Links page saying the link is unavailable or doesn’t exist, see the troubleshooting guide.
After you change a short link’s destination, an app that cached its preview can still show the old page, so check the short link in the tools again.
Understand how previews affect your click counts
Many apps fetch a link as soon as it’s pasted. Links redirects the crawlers, link previews and browser prefetches it recognizes without counting them or charging credits. Meta’s sharing crawler is one of them, so the Sharing Debugger adds no counted clicks. A tool Links doesn’t recognize counts as a click.
Your own test visits in a browser do count, and someone who opens the link twice counts twice. The analytics privacy guide explains what Links keeps about each click.
Check previews before every share
Use this checklist:
- Check the page’s tags in a private window.
- Give every changed image a new file name.
- Create the short link, or update its destination.
- Run the page and the short link through Meta’s and LinkedIn’s tools.
- Check the preview in a draft message.
- Post, then check one real post on each network.
Check again after a redesign, since a new template can change the tags. The theater now names each poster after its show.
Links keeps the same short address when you change where it leads, and leaves the preview fetches it recognizes out of your counts. The preview comes from your page, so that’s where you fix it.