Link Preview Not Showing? How to Fix Your Title and Image

You paste a link into a team chat and a bare web address appears, with no title, no picture and no line of text. Nobody clicks it.

If your link preview is not showing, the page is usually missing the tags that tell chat apps what to display, or the app is holding an older copy. The fix is to add the Open Graph tags and then ask the app to look again.

What is a link preview?

It is the small card an app builds when someone shares your link. It has a title, a short description and an image.

Apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack and WhatsApp build the card from tags in your page's code. They don't read your design. They read the tags.

The standard behind most of them is the Open Graph protocol. It names 4 required properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. It also lists og:description as optional, a summary of one to two sentences.

If those tags are missing, the app guesses. Sometimes it guesses well. Often it shows nothing.

Why does a missing preview cost you a click?

We found no study that measures it. We looked, and the claims we found online came from agency blogs with no data behind them. So treat this step as a hygiene check, not a proven lift.

The reason to care is simpler. A shared link is how your name moves between buyers. When someone sends your link to a coworker, the preview is the first thing that coworker sees. A blank card says "unfinished." A card with your title, one clear line and a real image says someone is home.

Our own audit found this on our homepage. The link preview was missing tags, so a shared link looked unfinished. We added them, and that step of the audit went to full marks.

Which tags does a preview need?

Six tags cover it. Start with the 4 required ones, then add a description and the image size.

1. og:title. The title the card shows.
2. og:type. What kind of page it is, such as a website or an article.
3. og:image. The full web address of the image.
4. og:url. The one address you want shared.
5. og:description. One or two sentences about the page.
6. og:image:width and og:image:height. The size of the image, in pixels.

The last pair matters more than it looks. Meta's sharing guide says: "Specify height and width for your image to ensure that the image loads properly the first time it's shared."

For size, Meta's best practices say to use images at least 1080 pixels wide for the best display on high-resolution screens.

Each app crops a little differently. Keep the important words and faces near the center.

What should a good preview say?

Write it for the person who has never heard of you.

The title should name the page the way a buyer would. "Payroll for 50 to 500 employees" says more than your company name alone. The description gets one or two sentences: what the page offers and who it is for. Skip the slogan.

The image should show something real, such as your product, a person or a clear headline on a plain background. A logo alone on white tells a buyer little.

Write a different preview for each key page. If every page shares one image, the cards in a chat all look alike, and a buyer can't tell your pricing page from your blog.

How do you test and refresh a preview?

Apps save a copy of your preview, so a fix can look like it didn't work.

Meta's guide explains why: images are cached by their address and won't update unless the address changes. So if you swap the picture, give the new file a new name.

Then work through this:

1. Paste your page into Meta's Sharing Debugger. It shows which tags the crawler reads, any errors, and it pulls a fresh copy.
2. Paste the same link into LinkedIn's Post Inspector to do the same job there.
3. Send the link to yourself in Slack or WhatsApp. Look at what a coworker sees.
4. If the old image keeps showing, change the image file's name and test again.
5. Run the Swift Site Audit. Its Share step checks the same tags on your homepage.

Other apps can add their own tags on top of Open Graph, so test in each app your buyers use. A fix that works in Facebook may still look wrong in another app.

How do you fix it on a site builder?

Most site builders have a field for it. Look in the page's SEO or social settings for a sharing image, a title and a description.

Fill in all three for your homepage first. Then do your top service pages. If your builder only lets you set one site-wide image, use a clear one with your name on it, and treat that as a start.

If you can edit the code, add the tags in the head of the page, one line each.

What does a share card look like on our own guides?

Every page of this guide has its own card. The step name sits in the top right, the page title is in large type, and the guide's name runs along the bottom with our web address.

We built it that way for a reason. A coworker who gets the link in a chat can tell at a glance which part of the visit it covers, and that it came from a real company. When you design your own, ask the same question: what does a stranger need to know before they click?

Which pages need their own card?

Not all of them. Start with the pages people actually share:

• Your homepage, with a card that names what you do and who for.
• Your top two or three service pages, each with its own title and image.
• Any guide or long article you hope others will pass around.

A shared image for every other page is fine. Check the key pages one by one, because a fix on one page does not carry to the rest.

FAQ

Why does my link preview show the wrong image?

The app is probably showing a saved copy. Change the image file's address, then run the page through the Sharing Debugger to pull a fresh one.

What size should my preview image be?

Use an image at least 1080 pixels wide, and set its width and height in the tags. Keep important words near the center, because apps crop differently.

Where does the preview come from?

From the tags in your page's own code. The app reads og:title, og:image and the others when someone shares your link. It does not read your design.

Next, the buyer taps your link. If you'd like a person to look at your previews, book a free 30-minute consultation. We want your success as much as you do.