Open Graph Validator

Check the rendered head, not the source

Scrapers do not execute JavaScript in most cases, so tags injected client-side by a single-page framework are invisible to them even though they appear in the browser's inspector. A page whose preview works in your own testing and fails when shared is usually this. Server-rendered or pre-rendered meta tags are the only reliable form.

The failures that account for most blank previews

A relative og:image path, which must be absolute. An image behind authentication or a firewall, which renders perfectly for a logged-in author and returns nothing to a scraper. An image exceeding a platform's size limit, commonly 5 MB or 8 MB. And a robots.txt or WAF rule blocking the platform's crawler user agent, which produces a total failure that looks like a tag problem.

Duplicate tags resolve unpredictably

A theme, a plugin and a manual edit each adding og:title leaves three in the head. Platforms differ on whether the first or last wins, so the preview can differ between networks from the same page. Finding duplicates is often more useful than checking the values.

og:url mismatches split engagement

Share counts accumulate against the URL in og:url. If it disagrees with the canonical, or varies by tracking parameter, the same page accrues counts under several identities. It should match rel=canonical exactly.

Caching means fixing is two steps

Platforms cache scraped metadata for days. Correcting a tag changes nothing for links already shared until the platform re-scrapes, so the fix is incomplete without running the platform's own debugger to force a refresh.