Facebook Link Preview Not Working? How to Fix It Fast

Facebook showing the wrong image, title, or no preview at all? Step-by-step diagnosis and fixes for missing og:image, stale cache, and Facebook Scraper blocks.

Why Facebook previews break

Facebook uses its own crawler (facebookexternalhit) to pull preview metadata when someone pastes a link. If your og:image, og:title, or og:description tags are missing, malformed, or blocked, Facebook either shows nothing or falls back to stale cached data.

Quick fix checklist

  1. Check for required tags: your page needs at minimum og:title, og:description, and og:image in the <head>.
  2. Use an absolute image URL: relative paths like /images/cover.png are not valid — Facebook requires https://yourdomain.com/images/cover.png.
  3. Meet Facebook image requirements: minimum 200×200 px; recommended 1200×630 px (1.91:1 ratio); JPEG or PNG; file size under 8 MB.
  4. Make sure the image is publicly reachable: paste the image URL directly into an incognito browser tab. If you hit a login wall or 403, Facebook cannot fetch it.
  5. Unblock facebookexternalhit in robots.txt: if your robots.txt blocks all bots or specifically blocks Facebot/facebookexternalhit, Facebook cannot crawl the page.
  6. Bust the Facebook cache: Facebook caches previews aggressively. Use the Sharing Debugger (developers.facebook.com/tools/debug) and click “Scrape Again” to force a fresh fetch after you update your tags.
  7. Check for redirect chains: if your URL redirects multiple times, make sure the final destination still has OG tags — redirects do not inherit tags from the original URL.
  8. Avoid JavaScript-only rendering: Facebook's crawler does not reliably execute JavaScript. OG tags must be present in the initial HTML response.

What to do if the preview is correct locally but wrong on Facebook

If your page source shows the right tags but Facebook displays old data, the issue is almost always the Facebook cache. Steps to clear it:

  1. Open the Sharing Debugger and paste your URL.
  2. Click “Debug” — this shows what Facebook last cached.
  3. Click “Scrape Again” to invalidate the cache and re-fetch live.
  4. If you see “Cannot scrape URL,” the image or page is unreachable from Facebook's servers. Verify the URL is public and not rate-limiting crawlers.

Common Facebook-specific gotchas

  • Missing og:url: always include og:url pointing to the canonical URL. Without it, Facebook may create separate cache entries for the same page.
  • og:type: set this to website or article. Missing type can cause Facebook to downgrade the preview format.
  • Image MIME type: serve images with the correct Content-Type header (image/jpeg or image/png). Some CDNs return application/octet-stream which breaks Facebook rendering.
  • Geo-blocking or Cloudflare rules: if your CDN or firewall blocks traffic from Facebook's IP ranges, the Scraper cannot reach your assets. Check your CDN rules and temporarily allow all traffic for the test.

Not sure which tag is causing the Facebook preview to break? Paste your URL into OG Fixer to scan all metadata, see the exact preview output, and generate a replacement OG image if needed.

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