LinkedIn link preview not showing: Post Inspector and the causes
Run the URL through LinkedIn's Post Inspector, then fix what it shows: missing og tags, an image under 1200 x 627 px, a blocked LinkedInBot or a redirect.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
A LinkedIn link preview fails when LinkedIn cannot read your Open Graph tags or fetch your image, or when it is showing a cached copy from before your fix. Run the URL through LinkedIn's Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector to see what LinkedIn gets, then fix the cause: a missing og: tag, an image under 1200 x 627 px or over 5 MB, a firewall or robots.txt rule that blocks LinkedIn, or a redirect to a login or cookie page.
Post Inspector is also how LinkedIn refreshes its cache, so it is both the diagnostic and the last step of the fix. The sections below go from what LinkedIn requires, through what the inspector shows, to each cause and its fix.
What does LinkedIn need to show a link preview?
LinkedIn's help page for making a website shareable names four Open Graph tags that "must exist": og:title, og:image, og:description and og:url. For the image it lists a minimum of 1200 (w) x 627 (h) pixels, a maximum file size of 5 MB and a recommended ratio of 1.91:1.
A block that meets every requirement:
<meta property="og:title" content="Invoicing software for freelancers">
<meta property="og:description" content="Send invoices in two clicks and chase late payers automatically.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.example.com/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.com/og/home-1200x630.png">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">
Use absolute https:// URLs for og:url and og:image. LinkedIn's help example shows protocol-relative URLs starting with //, but a full address is valid everywhere and removes any guesswork about the scheme. The same help page adds that "images less than 401 pixels wide display as a thumbnail image," so an undersized image can appear as a thumbnail instead of a wide card. The full size rules for every platform are in .
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
Why is my LinkedIn link preview not showing?
LinkedIn could not read the Open Graph tags or fetch the image: the og:title, og:image, og:description or og:url tag is missing, the image is under 1200 x 627 px or over 5 MB, a firewall or robots.txt blocks LinkedIn, or the URL redirects to a login or consent page. If you fixed it already, LinkedIn is showing a cached preview.
How do you use Post Inspector to diagnose a preview?
Open linkedin.com/post-inspector, enter the full URL you plan to share, and read the preview it builds. LinkedIn's help says to "enter the URL you want to share" and "confirm that the preview window shows the correct content." Whatever the inspector shows is what a new post will show, because it fetches the page again and updates LinkedIn's cached preview.
Read the result against your tags and map what you see to a cause:
What Post Inspector shows
Likely cause
Fix
No preview, or an error fetching the URL
LinkedIn could not load the page: blocked by a firewall, robots.txt, a login or deployment protection
Allow LinkedInBot; test the public production URL
A preview with no image
The image URL is relative, private, too large or returns an error
Serve a public 1200 x 630 PNG or JPEG under 5 MB at an absolute URL
A small thumbnail instead of a wide image
The image is under LinkedIn's size requirement
Use at least 1200 x 627 px at 1.91:1
A title or description that is not yours (a login page, a cookie banner, a country selector)
The URL redirected LinkedIn to another page
Serve the real page to the crawler on the first request
A wrong or empty title or description
og:title or og:description missing from the raw HTML
Render the tags on the server
The old image or title
A cached preview
Inspecting the URL refreshes it for new posts
Inspect the exact URL people will share, including any trailing slash or tracking parameters, because that is the URL LinkedIn fetches.
Is LinkedInBot blocked by your firewall or robots.txt?
If the tags are right and the preview still fails, LinkedIn is probably being refused. LinkedIn's help says that when an image meets the requirements "but it still does not appear," your "website may be blocking us from pulling the image or the image may be located on a protected directory or website." Check the firewall, bot protection and robots.txt in that order.
LinkedIn's crawler identifies itself with a user agent containing LinkedInBot, which is the string Next.js uses to recognise it among link-preview bots. Simulate it:
curl -sI -A "LinkedInBot/1.0" https://www.example.com/
curl -sI -A "LinkedInBot/1.0" https://www.example.com/og/home-1200x630.png
Both should return 200, and the image should return an image/ content type. A 403, a 429, a 503 with a challenge page, or a redirect to a login screen points to the blocker:
Bot protection or a web application firewall challenging unknown bots. Add an allow rule for LinkedIn's crawler, or at least exempt the paths people share and the image paths.
Rate limiting that treats repeated requests from one crawler as abuse and answers with a 429.
robots.txt rules that match the page or the image folder, such as Disallow: /assets/ when the OG image lives there. Remove the rule or add an Allow: for the image path.
Hotlink protection on the image host that refuses requests without your own site as the referrer.
Do redirects or cookie walls break LinkedIn previews?
They can, because the crawler builds the preview from whatever page it ends up on. If the shared URL redirects LinkedIn to a login page, a consent wall or a country selector, LinkedIn reads that page's tags. The preview then shows "Sign in" or a cookie notice instead of your content, or no image at all.
Check where the URL lands for a bot:
curl -sIL -A "LinkedInBot/1.0" https://www.example.com/pricing | grep -i "^HTTP\|^location"
A chain that ends anywhere other than the page itself is the problem. The common versions:
A consent management platform that serves a full-page interstitial before the site. Let bots through to the real page, or render the banner over the page rather than instead of it.
Geo or language redirects based on IP send the crawler elsewhere. LinkedIn's crawler may not come from your visitors' country, so it gets redirected. Serve the requested URL as-is and offer the switch in the page.
Preview deployments sit behind authentication. On Vercel, Standard Protection "protects all domains except production domains," so a link to a preview URL shows LinkedIn a login. Share and test the production URL.
Long redirect chains from http to https to www to a trailing slash. Link the final URL directly.
Are the Open Graph tags in the raw HTML?
LinkedIn's crawler reads the HTML the server returns. Next.js lists LinkedInBot among the "HTML-limited" bots for which it keeps metadata in the <head> instead of streaming it, and its source explains that such bots "might explicitly check for metadata in the head tag." Tags a single-page app adds after load are not something to rely on.
Confirm the tags are in the served HTML:
curl -s -A "LinkedInBot/1.0" https://www.example.com/ | grep -io '<meta[^>]*og:[^>]*>'
You should see all four required tags. If none print, render them on the server. If some print and the image does not, check that the og:image value is a full URL rather than a relative path. The same checks for Facebook, Slack, X and WhatsApp are collected in OG image not showing.
How do you refresh LinkedIn's cached preview?
Run the URL through Post Inspector again after your fix. LinkedIn's help explains that "if you have shared the same URL before, the image might already have been stored in the cache," and that Post Inspector is the tool "to refresh the URL." It is the refresh method LinkedIn documents.
The refresh has one limit worth knowing before you fix a live campaign. LinkedIn says "the changes you make will only affect the URL's preview image and information for new posts that include it. The preview for any existing posts with this URL will remain the same." A post already published with a broken preview keeps it; the fix applies to the next share.
The order that works:
Fix the tags, the image or the blocking rule on the live site.
Confirm with curl that LinkedInBot gets a 200 and sees the tags.
Inspect the URL in Post Inspector and check the preview.
Share the link in a new post.
X handles caching differently, with no inspector and a cache of up to 7 days; X card not showing an image covers that platform.
What should you check before an important LinkedIn post?
Run the whole sequence the day before a launch or announcement, not after the post is live, because a published post keeps the preview it was created with. The checks take a few minutes and cover every cause above.
Decide the exact URL you will share, with any tracking parameters, and open it in a private window to confirm it loads without a login or consent wall.
Run curl -s -A "LinkedInBot/1.0" against it and confirm all four og: tags are in the response.
Fetch the og:image URL with the same user agent and confirm a 200, an image/ content type and a file under 5 MB.
Check the image is at least 1200 x 627 px and close to 1.91:1.
Inspect the URL in Post Inspector and check the image, title and description.
Post, and look at the preview in the composer before you publish.
If you change anything after step 5, inspect the URL again so the refreshed preview is the one your post uses.
Check the page before you share it on LinkedIn
A preview is only as reliable as the page behind it. Run the free scan on LaunchScaler with the URL, no account needed. It does not render LinkedIn's preview, but its checks cover conditions LinkedIn's crawler depends on: invalid markup that closes the <head> early and drops the tags below it, content that only appears after JavaScript runs, redirect chains, and an incomplete or expired TLS certificate chain. Fix those, then inspect the URL once more before you post.
02
How do I refresh a LinkedIn link preview?
Open Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector, enter the URL and confirm the preview shows the right content. LinkedIn says this refreshes the preview for new posts only; posts already published keep the old preview.
03
What image size does LinkedIn need for link previews?
LinkedIn's help page for making a site shareable lists a minimum of 1200 x 627 px, a maximum file size of 5 MB and a recommended 1.91:1 ratio. A 1200 x 630 image meets all three.
04
Why does LinkedIn show the old image for my link?
LinkedIn caches the preview of a URL that has been shared before, so a new image does not appear until the cache is refreshed. Running the URL through Post Inspector refreshes it for future posts.
05
What user agent does LinkedIn use to fetch previews?
Its user agent contains LinkedInBot, which is how Next.js identifies it in its list of link-preview bots. Allow it in your firewall and bot protection, and make sure robots.txt does not block the page or the image path.
New Lovable apps render on the server; older ones are pre-rendered for verified crawlers. Find your stack, then fix domain, sitemap, robots and titles.
