Facebook Open Graph Debugger: How to Fix and Force-Refresh Previews

What is the Facebook Sharing Debugger?

The Facebook Sharing Debugger (also called the Open Graph Debugger) is Meta's official tool for inspecting and refreshing link preview data. It shows exactly what Facebook's scraper sees when it crawls your URL — including all Open Graph tags, warnings, and errors.

It also lets you force Facebook to re-scrape a URL, clearing its CDN cache so the correct preview appears immediately.

How to use it: step by step

1. Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ — you need to be logged in to a Facebook account.
2. Paste your page URL into the input field and click Debug.
3. Review the Link Preview section — this shows exactly what Facebook will display when someone shares your link.
4. Check the Open Graph Tags table for any missing or incorrect values.
5. If the data is wrong or stale, scroll down and click Scrape Again. Repeat 2–3 times if needed to propagate across Facebook's CDN.

Common errors and what they mean

"Provided og:image is not big enough"

Your og:image is below Facebook's minimum size of 200×200 px. Facebook recommends 1200×630 px for the best display. Replace the image with a correctly sized version.

"The following required properties are missing"

Add any missing tags listed. The four Facebook requires are: og:title, og:type, og:image, and og:url.

"Inferred Property" warnings

Facebook is guessing at a value because you didn't provide the explicit OG tag. These often produce incorrect or suboptimal previews. Add the explicit tags to remove the warning.

Correct tags but wrong preview

This is usually a CDN cache issue. Click Scrape Again 2–3 times. If the debugger shows correct data but shared posts still show the old image, the old preview is cached per-post — existing posts won't update, but new shares will display the correct image.

Required OG tags for Facebook

<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og.jpg" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/your-page" />
<meta property="og:description" content="A concise summary of this page." />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Your Site Name" />

OG image requirements for Facebook:

• Minimum: 200×200 px
• Recommended: 1200×630 px
• Maximum file size: 8 MB
• Supported formats: JPG, PNG, GIF (no animated GIFs for link previews)
• Must be served over HTTPS

When Scrape Again won't help

If you've scraped 3+ times and the debugger still shows incorrect data, the problem is in your live page HTML — not in the cache. Verify:

• The og:image URL returns an actual image (not a redirect or 404). Test it directly in your browser.
• The image is accessible without cookies or authentication.
• Your page doesn't block Facebook's scraper via robots.txt (check for User-agent: facebookexternalhit blocks).
• Your server isn't returning a non-200 status code to Facebook's crawler.