Preview cards are produced by the platform that renders them, from tags it fetched and then cached. Almost every complaint here is one of three things.
The platform cached an old version
Platforms cache aggressively and for a long time. After changing the social metadata on a link:
- Re-scrape the URL with the platform's own debugging tool, which is the only reliable way to force a refresh.
- Or add a harmless query parameter —
?a=b— producing a URL the cache has never seen. The redirect still works and the card is built fresh.
Nothing was set on the link
If a link has no Open Graph, X card or App Links values, the crawler is redirected and reads the destination's tags. That is often fine and sometimes not — if you want your own title and image, set them on the link in the Social media tab. A preview crawler is only intercepted and served your tags when the link actually has some.
Use the autofill button to pull the destination page's existing title, description and image and then edit from there.
The password or expiry page is what the crawler saw
Previews do not work on password-protected links: the crawler sees the password page, which is correct. The same applies to an expired link — the crawler gets the expired page. Neither is a bug.
Getting the image right
- Use an absolute HTTPS URL. Relative paths and
http://images are dropped by most platforms. - 1200 by 630 is the safe size for a large card.
- Set
og:image:width,og:image:heightandog:image:typefor scrapers that will not guess. - Set
og:image:alt— it is read aloud by screen readers. - Very large images are skipped by some platforms.
Checking what is actually served
The built-in Open Graph checker, meta tags checker and X card validator fetch a URL and show the tags found, which is faster than guessing. Check the short URL, not the destination — the short URL is what people share.
The card is right in one app and wrong in another
Different platforms read different tags. Set both the Open Graph and the X card values rather than assuming one covers the other.
Find this in your dashboard
- Sign in and select the workspace and domain you want to manage.
- Open Branded Links. Review the article’s steps and your plan’s available controls.
- Save your changes, reopen the record and verify the saved result. For routing changes, check the short link with a test visit.
