Question 1

What happens if I update my Open Graph image but Facebook still shows the old one?

Accepted Answer

Social media platforms heavily cache Open Graph data to save server resources and speed up rendering times. If you change your og:image on your server, Facebook will not automatically know about the change and will continue serving the old, cached image to users. To fix this, you must navigate to the Facebook Sharing Debugger, enter your URL, and click the "Scrape Again" button. This manual action forces the Facebook crawler to revisit your page, delete the old cached data, and download your newly updated image and text.

Question 2

Can I use multiple og:image tags on a single webpage?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the Open Graph protocol technically allows you to declare multiple og:image tags sequentially within the <head> of your document. When multiple images are provided, some platforms (historically Facebook) will create a carousel effect or allow the user sharing the link to manually select which image they prefer to display from a thumbnail menu. However, modern best practices strongly discourage this, as most platforms now simply default to the first image listed, and providing multiple high-resolution images unnecessarily bloats the HTML file size and slows down the crawler.

Question 3

Do Open Graph tags work in private messaging apps like WhatsApp and iMessage?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely. Modern private messaging applications contain their own lightweight, built-in link crawlers that operate locally on the user's device or via the app's servers. When you paste a link into WhatsApp or Apple's iMessage, the app instantly pings the URL, reads the Open Graph tags, and generates a rich preview bubble directly within the chat interface. Because these previews are smaller than desktop social feeds, having a highly legible og:image with large, clear text is even more critical for driving clicks from private "dark social" channels.

Question 4

Why is my og:title being ignored by the social platform?

Accepted Answer

If a social platform is ignoring your og:title and displaying your standard HTML instead, it is almost always due to a syntax error in your Open Graph code. Common errors include forgetting to close the meta tag, using incorrect quotation marks (such as curly "smart quotes" copied from a word processor instead of straight "dumb quotes"), or placing the tags outside of the <head> section of the HTML document. You must validate your HTML code to ensure the crawler can parse the tags without encountering fatal syntax errors.

Question 5

Is it necessary to include the og:url tag if it is just the same as the page link?

Accepted Answer

Including the og:url tag is absolutely critical for establishing the canonical, master version of your webpage. When marketers share links, they frequently append tracking parameters to the end of the URL (e.g., ?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=spring_sale). If you do not define the clean, base URL in your og:url tag, the social platform will treat every variation of the tracking link as a completely separate webpage, splitting your "Likes," "Shares," and social proof metrics across dozens of fragmented URLs instead of consolidating them into one powerful metric.

Open Graph Meta Tag Generator

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