Links to your page share without a picture

Applies to

every page

Typical severity

low

Effect on conversions

medium

Effort to fix

Quick to fix

What to look for

Missing og:image.

Why it matters

When someone shares your page on LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, Slack or iMessage, the app builds a preview card. It uses Open Graph tags to decide which title, description and image to show.

Without an og:image, the preview may show no picture, or a random image the app finds on the page, such as a logo cut in half or an icon. A clear image makes the link stand out in a busy feed or chat and looks more trustworthy.

What good looks like

The page has an og:image meta tag. We check that it exists. We recommend an image of 1200 by 630 pixels, using a full web address starting with https, alongside og:title and og:description.

How to check it yourself

1. View the page source and search for og:image.
2. Paste the page address into LinkedIn's Post Inspector or Facebook's Sharing Debugger. Both are free and show the preview card those sites will build.
3. Send the link to yourself on WhatsApp or Slack to see how it looks in a chat.
4. Check the image itself opens in a browser when you visit its web address.

How to fix it

• Create a 1200 by 630px image for the page. A clear photo or a simple branded card with the page's headline both work.
• Add the og:image tag with the full web address of the image, plus og:title and og:description.
• Set a site-wide default image, then override it on key pages such as products, services and articles.
• Most website builders and SEO plugins have a social image field in the page settings.
• After changing it, use the debugger tools above to refresh the cached preview.

<meta property="og:title" content="Boiler servicing in Leeds">
<meta property="og:description" content="Fixed prices, evening slots, Gas Safe engineers.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.co.uk/images/share-boiler.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">

Common mistakes

• Using a relative path such as /images/share.jpg. Many apps need the full address.
• Using a small, square logo, which gets cropped or shown tiny.
• Putting important text near the edges, where some apps crop.
• Forgetting that apps cache previews, so changes don't show until the cache is refreshed.

AgoraScan measures this automatically on every page it audits, on desktop and mobile.

Based on

• Open Graph protocol