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Guide · Open Graph
How to debug OG tags with the Facebook Sharing Debugger.
The Sharing Debugger shows you exactly what Facebook reads from your page, flags the errors, and lets you force a fresh scrape. Here's how to run it, how to read what it says, and what to do when you can't even open it.
The short answer
Paste your URL into developers.facebook.com/tools/debug, read the warnings, fix the tags, then click Scrape Again.
The debugger is also how you clear a stale Facebook card: changing the tags isn't enough, because Facebook serves a cached scrape. Scrape Again is what re-reads the page.
No Facebook developer account? You can read the same og: tags and preview the same card, no login, with the free slsh.me Open Graph checker — then ship with confidence.
Run the debugger in four steps.
From pasting a URL to a clean re-scrape — the whole loop.
Open the Sharing Debugger
Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug and sign in with a Facebook account. (No account? Jump to the no-login alternative below.)
Paste the exact URL and Debug
Enter the precise URL you'll share — including or excluding www and any trailing slash, since Facebook caches each variant separately — and click Debug.
Read the warnings and the preview
Facebook lists every og: tag it scraped, any warnings (missing image, no og:url, image too small), and a live preview of the card. Fix whatever it flags in your page's <head>.
Click Scrape Again
After editing your tags, hit Scrape Again. Facebook re-fetches the page and updates the cached card. Repeat until the preview is right and the warnings are gone.
What the warnings mean.
The debugger's messages are terse. Here's what the common ones are really telling you — and the one-line fix for each.
| Warning | What it means | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Missing Properties / og:image | Facebook found no usable image tag. | Add an absolute og:image (https://…), not a relative path. |
| Provided og:image is not big enough | The image is under the 200 × 200 minimum, so Facebook drops it. | Use 1200 × 630 and declare og:image:width / height. |
| Inferred Property | A tag was guessed from page content, not declared. | Set the real og:title / og:description explicitly. |
| Could not retrieve data / URL | The scraper couldn't reach the page — blocked, redirected, or down. | Allow facebookexternalhit in robots.txt; serve a 200 over HTTPS. |
| Object at URL ... not of type | og:type is missing or malformed. | Add og:type (website or article). |
When you can't open the debugger.
The official debugger needs a Facebook login. Plenty of people don't have a developer account, are debugging a client's page, or just don't want to sign in to Meta to check a meta tag. The debugger also only previews the Facebook card — not X, LinkedIn, Slack or the rest.
A standalone checker reads the same tags. The Open Graph spec is public, so any tool can fetch your page and report the same og: values Facebook would — plus render the card for every other platform in one pass, with no account required.
The free slsh.me Open Graph checker fetches your page, lists every og: and twitter: tag, runs a best-practices audit, and renders the real card on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, iMessage and WhatsApp — no Facebook login needed.
Want the card right the first time? Shorten your link on slsh.me and design its Open Graph card in seconds — free.
Questions
What is the Facebook Sharing Debugger? +
developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. You paste a URL and it shows exactly which Open Graph tags Facebook scraped, any errors or warnings, and a preview of the card. Clicking Scrape Again forces Facebook to re-fetch the page and clear its cached preview.How do I force Facebook to refresh a link preview? +
Scrape Again. Facebook re-fetches the page and replaces its cached preview with the current tags. This is the only reliable way to clear a stale Facebook card.Why does the Facebook debugger say my image is missing? +
og:image URL is relative instead of absolute, the image is behind a login or a robots.txt block, or it's too small (under 200 px). The debugger reports the exact reason under Warnings — fix the tag, then Scrape Again.Do I need a Facebook account to use the Sharing Debugger? +
Stop debugging cards by hand.
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