Free tool · Technical SEO
Open Graph & SERP Preview Checker
Preview your Google snippet and social share cards, and check the title, meta description, Open Graph and Twitter Card tags behind them, or write your own and preview them before publishing.
By Ajay Padhy · Updated · Free, no sign-up
Disclaimer
Previews are approximations. Google rewrites titles and descriptions when it thinks another text fits a search better, and each social platform crops images and truncates text in its own way. Platforms also cache previews, so use their own debugging tools to refresh a changed card.
Privacy: URLs you check are fetched once to produce the result and aren't stored.
How to use the preview checker
- Check a URL: enter a page address to fetch its live tags and see the Google snippet, a large social card and a summary of what's missing.
- Write your own: switch to the editor to draft a title and description and see the pixel-width preview update as you type, before you publish.
Title and description length
Google truncates by pixel width rather than character count: roughly 580–600 pixels for titles on desktop (about 50–60 characters) and around 920 pixels for descriptions (about 150–160 characters). Wide letters (W, M) use more space than narrow ones (i, l). The preview measures width, not just characters.
Google may rewrite your title or description when it thinks other text on the page matches a query better. A clear, specific title that matches the page's main heading makes rewrites less likely.
Open Graph tags every page should have
| Tag | What it does | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| og:title | Title of the share card | Can be shorter and punchier than the SEO title |
| og:description | Text under the title | 1–2 sentences |
| og:image | The card image | 1200×630 px, under about 1 MB, absolute URL |
| og:url | The canonical URL | Consolidates shares of URL variants |
| og:type | website or article | "article" for blog posts |
| twitter:card | Card style on X | summary_large_image for big previews |
Why your share preview looks wrong
- The platform cached an old version. Use LinkedIn's Post Inspector or Facebook's Sharing Debugger to refresh it.
- og:image is a relative URL, blocked by robots.txt, or too large.
- Tags are added by JavaScript. Social platforms don't run JavaScript, so tags must be in the raw HTML. Check with the CSR vs SSR checker.
- Several og:image tags. Platforms usually take the first one.
Good snippets and share cards don't change rankings directly, but they decide whether people click. That's part of the CTR work in my SEO consulting.
Open Graph image size and format
| Platform | Recommended image | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Facebook and LinkedIn | 1200 × 630 px (1.91:1) | Keep text inside the centre; edges can be cropped |
| X (summary_large_image) | 1200 × 628 px or larger, 2:1 | Under 5 MB; JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF |
| WhatsApp, Slack, Teams | Same og:image | Small previews crop to a square, so keep the subject central |
Use an absolute URL (https://…) for og:image, make sure it returns 200 without a login or a bot block, and add og:image:alt to describe it.
Meta tag checklist (copy and adapt)
<title>: unique, the main keyword early, around 50–60 characters<meta name="description">: a reason to click, around 120–155 characters<link rel="canonical">: the preferred URL of the pageog:title,og:description,og:image,og:url,og:typetwitter:cardset tosummary_large_image<meta name="robots">only when you need noindex or nofollow
Refreshing a cached preview
Social platforms cache previews. After you fix the tags, ask them to fetch the page again: LinkedIn's Post Inspector and Facebook's Sharing Debugger both re-scrape a URL on request. X refreshes its cache on its own after a while. Google rewrites titles and descriptions it considers unhelpful, so a preview here is a best estimate, not a promise of what will show.
FAQ
Open Graph & SERP Preview Checker: common questions
Short answers to what people ask most about this tool and topic.
1200×630 pixels (a 1.91:1 ratio) works across Facebook, LinkedIn and X large cards. Keep important text away from the edges, because some platforms crop, and keep the file reasonably small.
Google rewrites titles when it judges another text, often your H1 or anchor text, describes the page better for a query. Keep titles accurate, specific and consistent with the main heading.
X falls back to Open Graph tags, but set twitter:card to summary_large_image if you want a large image preview.
Paste the URL into LinkedIn's Post Inspector. It refetches the page and updates the cached preview.
Built by
SEO and AI search (GEO) consultant with 14+ years in digital growth. I build these tools for the checks I run on client sites every week. Need more than a quick check? See my SEO consulting or get in touch.
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