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Fix a wrong link image or missing link in a social message

When you add a link to a social message, CoSchedule reads the linked page to build the link preview: the title, description and image that publish with the message on networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky and X. This applies to every plan.

Why the preview is wrong or missing

The preview comes from the page you link to. Check these on that page:

  • Open Graph tags: the page needs Open Graph tags, especially og:image, which names the preview image. Without them, the network guesses or shows no image.
  • Image size: Facebook rejects preview images that are too large. Facebook's guide to images in link shares explains its image requirements.
  • A blocked crawler: the site's firewall or bot protection blocks CoScheduleBot, the crawler CoSchedule uses to read the page. This is the most common cause, and a faster site doesn't fix it.

Fix it on a site you manage

  1. Ask your web admin to add Open Graph tags to the page, including og:image. Facebook's guide to sharing for webmasters explains the tags.
  2. Make sure the preview image meets Facebook's image requirements.
  3. Make sure the site lets CoScheduleBot through. What CoScheduleBot is lists what to ask your host to allow.
  4. Open the social message on your calendar.
  5. Click the X on the link preview to remove it.
  6. Paste the link into the message again. If the preview doesn't appear, press Enter.
  7. Click Save.

To see what Facebook reads from your page, use Meta's Sharing Debugger.

Fix it on a site you don't manage

Only the site's owner can change its preview. To choose the image yourself, send an image message with the link in the text instead:

  1. Open the social message on your calendar.
  2. Click the X on the link preview to remove it.
  3. Click the image icon (Add media to message).
  4. Add your own image.
  5. Leave the link in the message text.
  6. Click Save.

Errors you may see

In the composer

When CoSchedule can't read a link you add in the web composer, it shows one of these in the warning box with the composer's other warnings:

  • An unknown error occurred scraping the link. Please check the link and try again.
  • (404) We were unable to scrape the link because the site was not found. Please check the URL and try again.
  • We were unable to scrape the link because CoSchedule was denied access to the site. To fix this, your website administrator can follow the instructions at coschedule.com/coschedulebot
  • A code such as (401), (400), (406) or (500), then: "We were unable scrape the link because the site returned an invalid response. Please check the URL and try again."
  • (429) We were unable to scrape the link because the site is rate limiting our requests. Please try again later.

If CoSchedule was denied access, the site is blocking CoScheduleBot. See What CoScheduleBot is.

In the mobile app, the composer shows only "Please enter a valid URL."

On a Facebook message

For other errors, see Social message errors and what they mean.

The link is missing from the published post

When a link message publishes to Facebook or LinkedIn, the network removes the URL from the message text, because the link preview already links to the page.

To keep the URL in the text, add words or hashtags after it. For example:

  • Removed: Read our spring guide https://example.com/spring-guide publishes as "Read our spring guide" with the link preview.
  • Kept: Read our spring guide https://example.com/spring-guide #marketing publishes with the URL still in the text.

Still not right?

Contact support with a link to the social message and the page it links to. See Contact support and find CoSchedule policies.

Learn more