How to Check Your Open Graph Preview: Step-by-Step Guide [2026]
Checking your Open Graph preview before sharing a link on social media can save you from publishing broken, imageless, or poorly formatted cards that get ignored in feeds. WikiPlus OG Preview tool lets you see exactly how your URL will render on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Slack without actually posting it. This step-by-step guide explains every element of the OG preview, why each matters, and how to fix common problems before your link goes live.
Why Open Graph Previews Determine Social Click Rates
When a URL is shared on any major social platform, the platform scrapes the page and constructs a preview card using Open Graph meta tags. This card — consisting of an image, title, and description — is what most users see before deciding whether to click. Research from Buffer and Hootsuite consistently shows that posts with well-formatted preview cards generate two to three times more clicks than link-only posts. A missing OG image causes the platform to either display no image or pull a random, often irrelevant one from the page. An overly long og:title gets truncated with an ellipsis. A missing og:description leaves the card looking incomplete. Checking your OG preview before publishing lets you catch these issues before they reduce the reach of your content.
How WikiPlus OG Preview Tool Works
WikiPlus OG Preview tool at wikiplus.co fetches the Open Graph tags from any publicly accessible URL and renders simulated preview cards showing how your link will look on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Slack. The tool reads og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image tags from the page head. It displays the cards side by side so you can compare rendering across platforms in one view. Because different platforms have different card aspect ratios, title length limits, and image cropping rules, the same URL can look very different across platforms. WikiPlus runs entirely in your browser — no data uploaded to a server — and processes the tag inspection locally after fetching the public URL.
Step-by-Step: Checking Your OG Preview
Go to wikiplus.co and open the OG Preview tool. Step one: paste the full URL of the page you want to check into the input field. Step two: click Check Preview. The tool fetches the page and reads its OG tags. Step three: review the rendered cards for each platform. Check the image is loading and cropped attractively at the platform-specific aspect ratios. Step four: check the title length — Facebook truncates after approximately 88 characters, LinkedIn after 70, X after 70. Step five: check the description — Facebook shows around 300 characters, LinkedIn around 120. Step six: if any element looks wrong, go to your page, update the relevant meta tag using WikiPlus Meta Tag Generator, redeploy, and run the OG preview check again.
Reading the Results: What Good vs Bad Previews Look Like
A good OG preview has a sharp, relevant 1200x630 image with text or branding visible even at thumbnail size; a title under 60 characters that communicates the page topic; and a description that completes the pitch in 100-120 characters. A bad preview has a missing or broken image placeholder; a title that is cut off mid-word; a description that reads like raw HTML or a random sentence from the page body; or a mismatched image that has nothing to do with the content. The WikiPlus OG Preview tool highlights missing tags with warning indicators and shows character counts so you can spot problems at a glance.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I test my Open Graph tags?
- Use WikiPlus OG Preview tool at wikiplus.co to see simulated preview cards for your URL instantly. For platform-specific validation, Facebook provides the Sharing Debugger which shows exactly how Facebook reads your tags. LinkedIn has the Post Inspector tool. For X (Twitter), use the Card Validator. WikiPlus gives you a unified multi-platform view in one step without requiring any social account.
- Why is my Open Graph image not showing?
- The most common causes are: the og:image URL is relative rather than absolute (must start with https://); the image URL requires authentication or is blocked by a firewall; the image file has been moved or deleted; the og:image tag is missing from the page head entirely; or the platform is still showing a cached old image. Fix the tag, redeploy, then use the platform cache-clearing tool to force a fresh scrape.
- What size should my Open Graph image be?
- The recommended OG image size is 1200x630 pixels — this is the 1.91:1 ratio used by Facebook and LinkedIn for wide card previews. The minimum is 200x200 pixels; images smaller than this may be ignored. For X summary_large_image cards, 1200x628 pixels is optimal. Keep file size under 300 KB and use JPEG or PNG format. Always include og:image:width and og:image:height in your tags alongside the URL.