Open Graph tags: image size, the tags you need and how to test them

What size should an Open Graph image be?

Open Graph tags are a few lines in a page’s HTML that decide the title, description and image people see when the page’s link is shared in a chat or a social app. For the image, the short answer is 1200 x 630 pixels. No AI assistant publishes that it uses these tags, as a later section shows, so the sure reward here is a better link preview, not a better chance of being named in an answer.

Here is what each platform publishes, read in its own documentation on November 4, 2026. Where a cell says none, the source gives no number.

From those figures, our suggestion is one image at 1200 x 630 pixels, as JPG or PNG, under 5 MB. That meets the sizes of Meta and LinkedIn and the width of Apple. Keep the main subject near the center: Meta’s FAQ says many factors decide how an image is cropped. Choose JPG or PNG because Meta’s list of image types names only JPEG, GIF and PNG. Apple’s talk “Ensuring Beautiful Rich Links” adds that smaller files make the link appear faster.

LinkedIn’s page says it was last updated 3 years ago, and any of these numbers can change without notice, so the test further down counts for more than this table. For an app that is not listed, send yourself the link and look.

Which Open Graph tags does a page need?

The Open Graph protocol was created at Facebook and its spec lives at ogp.me. The spec’s required list and the lists Meta and LinkedIn publish overlap, but they do not match.

In practice, set og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url and og:type on every page someone might share: that covers all three lists. Add the width, height and alt lines for the image. Meta also lists fb:app_id, which it ties to Facebook Insights, so our suggestion is to skip it unless you use those reports.

X has tags of its own. Search engines still quote its Cards docs as saying X checks its own tag first and falls back to Open Graph for the title, description and image. On November 4, 2026 those pages no longer opened at their old addresses, so treat that as past behavior and check with a real post. The one X line most sites add is twitter:card, which picks the card type.

Open Graph and schema markup do different jobs. Open Graph sets how one link looks when it is shared. Schema markup states facts about a page or a business in a shared vocabulary. A business site usually wants both.

What does a complete set of Open Graph meta tags look like?

Here is a full head block for an invented business, Harbor Street Bakery, on example.com. Change the words and addresses to your own.

<head>
  <title>Sourdough classes in Portland | Harbor Street Bakery</title>

  <meta property="og:title" content="Sourdough classes in Portland">
  <meta property="og:description" content="Three-hour weekend classes for beginners. Take home a starter and two loaves.">
  <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.com/images/sourdough-class.jpg">
  <meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
  <meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
  <meta property="og:image:alt" content="Hands shaping a round loaf on a floured wooden table">
  <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.example.com/classes/sourdough">
  <meta property="og:type" content="website">
  <meta property="og:site_name" content="Harbor Street Bakery">
  <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">

  <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
</head>

Each line, in plain words:

• title is your normal page title, not part of Open Graph.
• og:title is the headline of the preview. Meta asks for it “without any branding such as your site name”, and Apple says the same.
• og:description is the line under the headline. ogp.me asks for one to two sentences and Meta says usually 2 to 4, so two sentences satisfy both.
• og:image is the full address of the picture, starting with https://.
• og:image:width and og:image:height state the size. Meta says an image may not render the first time a link is shared, and that these two tags are one way to avoid that.
• og:image:alt describes what is in the picture, “not a caption”, in the words of ogp.me.
• og:url is the page’s one permanent address. Meta asks for it “without session variables, user identifying parameters, or counters”.
• og:type is website for an ordinary page, which is also Meta’s default. ogp.me defines other types, such as article.
• og:site_name is the name of the whole site. This is where the name belongs, Apple says, instead of in the title.
• og:locale is the language and territory. Both ogp.me and Meta default to en_US, so a US English site can leave it out.
• twitter:card set to summary_large_image asks X for the large image card. Without this tag, the older docs said, a summary card may be rendered from the Open Graph tags.

How do you test Open Graph tags?

Work from your own page outward, in this order.

Read the source. In your browser, choose “View page source” and search the text for og:. If the tags are not there, they are missing or they are added by JavaScript. Then open the og:image address in a private window: it should load without a login.

Meta’s Sharing Debugger, at developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. Log in to Facebook, which the tool requires, and enter the page address. Meta says it “will show which meta tags the crawler scrapes as well as any errors or warnings”. Running it also triggers a fresh scrape of the page, so run it again after each fix.

LinkedIn’s Post Inspector, at linkedin.com/post-inspector. LinkedIn’s help gives three steps: open Post Inspector, enter the URL you want to share, and confirm that the preview window shows the correct content.

X. Paste the link into a new post and look at the card before you publish, which is our suggestion. We could not confirm that X still offers a separate card preview tool.

Apple Messages. Apple’s tech note names no test tool, so our suggestion is to send the link to yourself.

Free sites called an Open Graph checker, tester or preview tool list your tags and draw sample previews, which is a quick way to see everything in one place. They read your page themselves, so they show what the page says now, not what a platform stored from an earlier visit.

Why does the old image keep showing after you fix the tag?

Platforms store what they read, so a corrected tag can sit behind an old preview. Each one handles this differently.

One more Facebook rule: once a post sharing a link has more than 50 interactions, Meta’s FAQ says the link’s title can no longer be changed.

The order that follows from all this, as our suggestion:

• Save the new image under a new file name, such as sourdough-class-v2.jpg, and keep the old file: Meta warns that removing it can leave existing shares showing a white area.
• Point og:image at the new file, clear your site’s cache or CDN if it has one, and confirm the new tag in the page source.
• Run the Sharing Debugger and the Post Inspector.
• Test with a new post, because older posts keep what they have.

Why does a link preview fail when the tags are there?

These are the usual causes, each stated as far as the documentation goes.

If you put words on the image, note that Apple’s talk says images “should not include text” and Google’s image guide says to avoid an image with text in the og:image tag. The Meta and LinkedIn pages we read do not address it.

Where do you set Open Graph tags on your website platform?

You rarely need to edit code. These are the settings each vendor’s help pages describe.

• WordPress with Rank Math: in the post editor, open the Rank Math meta box, then the Social tab. The Facebook tab sets the image, title and description, and the Twitter tab copies them by default. Rank Math recommends uploading 1200 x 630.
• WordPress with Yoast SEO: in the Yoast SEO sidebar of a post or page, open Social media appearance and set the image, title and description. The Open Graph switch is on by default, under Yoast SEO, Settings, Site features, Social sharing.
• Shopify: the store-wide image is in Online Store, Preferences, in the social sharing image and SEO section. Images in the theme’s code or settings take priority over it. In a free Shopify theme, products, collections and blog posts show their own featured image, and Shopify generates og:image tags when a theme has none.
• Squarespace: the Social Sharing panel holds the social sharing logo for the whole site. For one page, open the Pages panel, then the page’s settings, then the Social tab, and add an Alternate Social Sharing Image.
• Wix: go to SEO & GEO in the dashboard, then Tools and settings, then SEO Settings. Pick the page type and click Edit next to Basics & social share. The title and description default to your SEO Basics text. Wix says each network uses its own criteria, so while these settings are likely to be used, “it’s not guaranteed”.
• Webflow: in Page settings, the Open Graph settings hold the title, description and image. On Collection templates, these can be mapped to fields in the CMS.

Do ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity read Open Graph tags?

No assistant publishes that it uses these tags. On November 4, 2026 we read what each company offers site owners and developers, and searched each page for Open Graph, og:title, og:description and og:image.

That silence does not prove they ignore the tags. A bot that reads a page’s HTML has them in front of it, and nobody outside these companies can say what it does with them.

What is documented sits next door, in ordinary Google Search. Google lists og:title among its sources for title links, says its site name system “will also consider” og:site_name, and names og:image as one way to influence the preview image in Search and Discover. It also says this selection is automated, so none of it is a guarantee, and those pages do not mention AI features.

So the sure benefit is a good link preview when someone shares your page in a chat or social app. If an assistant does read the tags as well, accurate tags cost you nothing. That is why MWY gives this item a low weight: 2, where the heaviest items carry 12, and its report places it in the lowest of three impact bands. It sits with the other 23 items in our GEO audit checklist. Fix it when it is quick, and fix what stops bots from reading your pages first.

What the MWY checker does and does not check about Open Graph

MWY’s AI visibility checker reads your home page as raw HTML, without running JavaScript, and looks for og:title, og:description and og:image. All three present is a pass, one or two is a partial, and none is a fail. Tags that only appear after JavaScript runs count as missing. It also reads og:site_name when it compares how your business name is written across your site.

It does not open the image or measure its size, and it does not check that the address is absolute. For this item it does not read your inner pages. It cannot see what Meta, LinkedIn or X have cached. For those, use the tools above.

In our November 4, 2026 round of 32 hand-picked business sites, which is not a sample of the web, this item passed on 22, was partial on 6 and failed on 4. So most of those sites had the tags. Whether a preview looks right is what the tests above show.

The free view lists the 5 items with the largest gain, so an item this light will often not appear there. Pro, which opens soon, lists all 24 items with fixes for your platform. The checker does not claim that these tags lead an assistant to name your business, and nothing published today supports that claim.