Why Your Link Looks Broken When Shared (and the 10-Minute Fix)

By Om Usturge · Updated November 2, 2026 · 1 min read

You post your new article and the card shows no image, or last year's title. Nothing makes good work look sloppier. The cause is almost always three small tags.

What platforms read

Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack and most chat apps read Open Graph tags. X reads its own twitter: tags and falls back to Open Graph. The ones that matter:

• og:title and og:description
• og:image (use a full https address, not a relative path)
• twitter:card set to summary_large_image for the big image on X

The image rules that trip people up

• Use about 1200 x 630 pixels, the 1.91:1 shape platforms expect.
• Keep key text away from the edges, because some apps crop.
• Use a public file. If the image sits behind a login or blocks bots, the card stays blank.
• Keep the file reasonably small so apps do not give up waiting for it.

"I fixed it but the old card still shows"

Platforms cache cards. After you change tags, ask each one to look again: Facebook's Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn's Post Inspector and X's current card tools all let you refresh. Chat apps like WhatsApp can hold on longer, so test with a fresh link variation such as adding ?v=2.

A 10-minute routine

1. Run your page in the SEO Preview and check the Facebook/LinkedIn and X cards.
2. Fix anything marked in red first (usually a missing image).
3. Hit Copy tags and paste the block into your page head.
4. Refresh the platform caches and share to yourself as a test.

Quick sanity check

Does the card still make sense if someone sees only the image and the title? If not, rewrite the title for sharing: it can be warmer and more curious than the one you use for Google.

Try it: open the SEO Preview, paste your latest post and see what your readers see.