What is link preview?

A link preview is the card with a title, short description and image that appears when you paste a web link into a social post or message.

Link previews turn a plain web address into something people can see and understand at a glance. A clear image and a useful title make people far more likely to tap through than a bare URL does.

Most networks build the preview automatically by reading tags in your web page's code, often called Open Graph tags. Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram all show previews, though each one crops images a little differently. Some networks show smaller previews or push link posts lower in the feed, so results vary.

Before sharing a page, check that it has a clear title, a short description and a good-sized image set in its page tags. If the preview looks wrong or old, many networks offer a debugging tool that refreshes the cached version. And write a caption that gives people a reason to click instead of relying on the preview alone.

Example

A local bakery updated the image tag on its holiday order page so every shared link showed a photo of its cakes instead of the site logo.