Open Graph & Twitter Cards Explained
How Open Graph and Twitter Card tags control the preview when your links are shared, the image sizes to use, and why your preview may be blank.
By the ToolsHub team · Updated May 1, 2026
When you paste a link into Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack or X, the rich card that appears — title, description and image — is controlled by special meta tags. Get them right and your links look professional and earn more clicks. Build them with our Open Graph Generator and Twitter Card Generator.
Open Graph — most platforms
The Open Graph protocol (originally from Facebook) is read by nearly every platform: LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord and more. The key tags are og:title, og:description, og:image and og:url. Use a 1200×630 pixel image for a crisp preview.
Twitter Cards — X
X reads its own twitter: tags, falling back to Open Graph for anything missing. The twitter:card tag chooses the style: summary_large_image for a big edge-to-edge image, or summary for a compact thumbnail.
Why your preview might be blank
- The image URL is relative — it must be an absolute
https://URL. - The image is too small, or the tags are missing entirely.
- The platform cached an old version — re-scrape it in the platform's sharing debugger.