Social Media Preview Debugging
How to debug and fix broken social preview cards — Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and LinkedIn scraper issues.
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Tags: social media preview debugger, fix OG tags, Twitter card debugger
Social Media Preview Debugging A share card that shows the right image and title drives more clicks. A broken or generic card wastes the share. This guide covers every tool and technique for diagnosing and fixing social preview issues. --- How Social Scrapers Work? When someone shares a URL, the social platform's scraper: Makes an HTTP GET request to the URL Reads the raw HTML response (does not execute JavaScript) Parses tags in for Open Graph and Twitter Card data Caches the result (often aggressively, for hours or days) Renders the cached data as a link preview card The critical constraint: scrapers do not run JavaScript. If your OG tags are written by React, Vue, or any client-side framework, scrapers see the pre-JavaScript HTML — which likely has no OG tags. --- What about Debugging…
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my social media preview wrong?
The most common causes: missing or incorrect OG tags, a relative instead of absolute image URL, an image under the minimum size, the platform has a cached version of old tags, or the page requires JavaScript to render the tags (which scrapers don't execute).
How do I refresh the Facebook link preview?
Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ and enter your URL. Click 'Debug' to see what Facebook currently reads. Click 'Scrape Again' to force Facebook to re-crawl the page. The cache clears after 30 minutes to 24 hours depending on share frequency.
How do I use the Twitter Card Validator?
Visit cards-dev.twitter.com/validator, enter your URL, and click 'Preview Card'. The tool shows a live preview of how your URL appears in Twitter feeds and lists any errors or warnings in the card metadata.
Why is LinkedIn showing the wrong preview?
LinkedIn caches OG data aggressively and for a long time. Use the LinkedIn Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector to force a re-crawl. If the URL was shared recently, LinkedIn may show the old cached version for days.
How do I debug Open Graph tags?
View your page source (right-click → View Page Source) and search for `og:`. Verify tags are present, that image URLs are absolute HTTPS, and that the image is accessible from a public URL. Then use platform-specific debugger tools to verify what each scraper reads.
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