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OG Image Checker — Preview Your Social Media Cards

ST
ScreenURL Team
••4 min read

OG Image Checker — Preview Your Social Media Cards

You share a link on Twitter and... it looks terrible. No image, wrong title, generic description. Sound familiar?

The problem is usually your Open Graph (OG) tags — the meta tags that control how your URL appears on social media. ScreenURL's free OG image checker shows you exactly what social platforms see when they crawl your URL.

What Are Open Graph Tags?

Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook that lets you control how your content appears when shared on social media. The key tags are:

  • og:title — The title shown in the social card
  • og:description — The description text below the title
  • og:image — The preview image (this is the big one)
  • og:url — The canonical URL
  • og:type — The content type (website, article, etc.)

Twitter has its own variant called Twitter Cards (twitter:card, twitter:image, etc.) but falls back to OG tags when Twitter-specific tags aren't present.

Why OG Images Matter

Social media posts with images get dramatically more engagement:

  • Twitter: Posts with images get 150% more retweets
  • Facebook: Posts with images get 2.3x more engagement
  • LinkedIn: Posts with images get 98% more comments

A missing or broken OG image means your shares blend into the feed without standing out. You're leaving clicks on the table.

How to Check Your OG Image

Free Online Tool

Visit the OG Image Checker and enter your URL. The tool will:

  1. Fetch all Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags
  2. Display the actual OG image
  3. Show previews of how your link appears on different platforms
  4. Flag any missing or problematic tags

Check via API

For automated validation across many pages:

curl "https://screenurl.com/api/screenshot?url=https://example.com&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY&meta=true"
const res = await fetch(
  "https://screenurl.com/api/screenshot?url=https://example.com&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY&meta=true"
);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.meta.ogImage);  // OG image URL
console.log(data.meta.ogTitle);  // OG title
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://screenurl.com/api/screenshot",
    params={"url": "https://example.com", "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY", "meta": "true"}
)
data = res.json()
print(data["meta"]["ogImage"])

OG Image Best Practices

Recommended Dimensions

  • Minimum: 600×315 pixels
  • Recommended: 1200×630 pixels (2:1 ratio)
  • Maximum file size: Under 8MB (smaller is better for load time)

Common Mistakes

  1. No OG image at all — Social platforms may pick a random image from your page or show nothing
  2. Image too small — Platforms may not display images under 200×200px
  3. Wrong aspect ratio — 2:1 ratio works best across all platforms
  4. Broken image URL — The og:image URL returns a 404
  5. HTTP instead of HTTPS — Some platforms reject non-HTTPS image URLs
  6. Cached old image — Platforms cache OG data; you may need to clear their cache after updates

Clearing Social Media Cache

After updating your OG tags, clear the cache on each platform:

Validating OG Tags Across Your Entire Site

Don't just check your homepage. Every page that might be shared needs proper OG tags:

  • Blog posts
  • Product pages
  • Landing pages
  • Documentation pages

Use the ScreenURL API to automate checks across all your URLs. Sign up for a free API key with 100 calls per month.

Check your OG tags right now with our free OG image checker.