WordPress OG image not showing when you share a post

On WordPress the Open Graph tags come from an SEO plugin or the theme. Two sources fighting, a cached page or a small image are the usual causes.

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Quick fix

  1. Check the post with the meta tag checker and look for duplicate og:image tags.

  2. Let one plugin output Open Graph and turn it off in the others.

  3. Clear your page cache, plugin cache and CDN cache.

  4. Refresh the link on each platform with the refresh tool.

Why the WordPress image isn’t showing

  • Two plugins print Open Graph tags. Yoast warns that duplicate tags make Facebook, X and LinkedIn pick the wrong text or image.

  • Open Graph output is switched off in your SEO plugin.

  • A cache still serves the old HTML. Server, theme, plugin and CDN caches all count.

  • The post has no featured image or social image, so the plugin falls back to a default or nothing.

  • The platform cached the old preview.

How to fix it

  1. Open the post in the meta tag checker and count the og:image tags. There should be one.

  2. In Yoast SEO, go to Settings, Site features, Social sharing and turn Open Graph data on. Turn it off in any other plugin that also outputs it.

  3. Set a featured image, or a specific image in the Social media appearance tab of the Yoast sidebar.

  4. Purge every cache layer, including Cloudflare or your host’s cache.

  5. Run the URL through Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn’s Post Inspector.

Tags your plugin should output

  • og:title, og:description, og:url, og:image

  • og:type of article for posts

  • article:published_time and article:modified_time, which Yoast adds

  • twitter:card for X

Image size rules

  • Facebook: minimum 200 x 200 px, 1200 x 630 px recommended, max 8 MB

  • LinkedIn: minimum 1200 x 627 px, max 5 MB

  • WhatsApp: under 600 KB

Yoast’s own help page suggests keeping images under 2 MB and no larger than 2000 x 1600 px. Check yours with the OG image size checker.

How to force a refresh

Clear the WordPress caches first, then refresh each platform. Facebook needs Scrape Again in the Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn needs Post Inspector, and X, Slack and Discord need the URL shared with a new query string. The refresh tool links them all.

Sources

FAQ

Why does Facebook show the wrong image for my WordPress post?

Usually two plugins or the theme output og:image tags. Keep one source of Open Graph tags and clear your caches.

Where do I set the share image in Yoast SEO?

In the Social media appearance tab of the Yoast sidebar on the post. Without it, Yoast uses the featured image.

I changed the featured image but Facebook still shows the old one. Why?

Facebook caches images by URL. Upload the new image as a new file, then click Scrape Again in the Sharing Debugger.

Check your page, then refresh the preview

Paste your URL into the free checker to see the exact tags each app reads. Once the tags are right, use the refresh tool to clear the old preview.

Check your URL

Refresh preview

Check image size

Related guides

Facebook link preview not showing or not updating

Facebook reads Open Graph tags with its own crawler and caches the result for up to 30 days. Fix the tags and image, then scrape the URL again.

Shopify social sharing image not working

Shopify chooses the share image in a fixed order: theme code, then theme settings, then the image in Preferences. Uploading to the wrong place is the most common cause.

Webflow Open Graph image not working

Webflow sets Open Graph per page, never globally. CMS template pages need an Image field, and every image in that collection must share the same size.