What gets pulled from a URL
Every social platform reads a small set of HTML <meta> tags when you paste a link: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, plus twitter:card, twitter:image and the page's <title> as fallback.
Our preview tool fetches your URL, parses these tags, and renders the exact preview each platform will show.
Step-by-step
- 1Open the URL Preview Tool.
- 2Paste any public URL.
- 3Click Preview.
- 4Review the WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X and Facebook cards side-by-side.
- 5If anything is missing or wrong, fix the og:* tags on the source page and re-test.
Common preview problems
- Missing og:image — preview shows just title + URL, no thumbnail.
- og:image too small — under 200×200, most platforms refuse to render it.
- og:image not absolute — relative URLs are ignored; always use full https://… URLs.
- og:title same as <title> — fine, but tailoring og:title for social can boost CTR.
- Cache — LinkedIn caches previews aggressively; use their Post Inspector to refresh.
OG image best practices in 2026
- Use 1200×630 (1.91:1) for best cross-platform rendering.
- Keep important text in the centre 60% — edges get cropped on some platforms.
- Use brand colours and a readable headline — previews are tiny.
- Generate per-page OG images, not one generic image for the whole site.
Why link previews matter for click-through
When you paste a URL into WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or a link-in-bio, the platform fetches the page and renders a card — title, description, image, sometimes a video. That card is the entire decision surface for whether someone clicks. A good preview can double click-through; a missing or broken preview signals "sketchy link" and kills the message. The card is built from Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags on the destination page, plus the favicon and canonical URL.
Common reasons previews break
- Missing og:image — the platform shows a blank card or guesses badly from the first image on the page.
- og:image too small — Facebook requires 1200×630 minimum; smaller images render at low quality or are ignored.
- Robots.txt blocks scrapers — if you've disallowed user-agents like facebookexternalhit or Twitterbot, no card is generated.
- Cached old preview — platforms cache previews for days. After updating meta tags, force a refresh via Facebook's Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn's Post Inspector.
- Redirects strip headers — a chain of HTTP redirects can drop meta tags before they reach the scraper. Use the final canonical URL.
What the inspector reveals
The URL preview tool fetches the page the same way a chat app would, parses every relevant meta tag (og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, og:type, og:site_name, twitter:card, twitter:image, canonical, favicon), and shows the result alongside a visual preview. It also flags missing tags and image-size problems before you publish or share the link. Use it as a final check on every marketing page, landing page and blog post — broken previews are one of the silent reasons campaigns underperform.
FAQ
- Is the URL Preview Tool free?
- Yes — preview unlimited URLs for free.
- Does it work on private / behind-login URLs?
- No — we can only fetch publicly accessible pages.
- Why does my preview look different on WhatsApp vs LinkedIn?
- Each platform reads slightly different tags and applies its own crop rules. We render each one's actual behaviour.
- How do I refresh a cached preview?
- Each platform has its own debugger — Facebook Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn Post Inspector, Twitter Card Validator. Use those to flush their caches.
- Are my URLs stored?
- No — URLs are fetched once and not logged.
- Can I preview my own staging site?
- Only if it's publicly accessible. Tunnels like ngrok work fine.