Glossary
What is an Open Graph image?
An Open Graph image is the picture a website specifies, with the og:image tag, to appear in the preview card when a link to one of its pages is shared on social networks and messaging apps.
Also called OG image, og:image, social share image
How it works
The Open Graph protocol was introduced by Facebook in 2010 and is now read by LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, iMessage and many others. A page sets tags in its head, such as og:title, og:description, og:url and og:image. When someone pastes the link, the app fetches the page, reads those tags and builds a card.
X reads its own twitter: tags first and falls back to Open Graph tags when they are missing.
Why it matters for B2B websites
B2B links travel through LinkedIn posts, sales emails, Slack channels and buying committee chats. The card is often the first thing a buyer sees of your page. A missing image shows a grey box or a random logo crop; a clear one with the page title gets more clicks and looks like a company that pays attention.
Good practice
- Use 1200 × 630 pixels (a 1.91:1 ratio), the size most platforms recommend
- Keep text large and away from the edges, since some apps crop to a square
- Use an absolute URL, starting with https://, in the og:image tag
- Give key pages their own image, not the same one everywhere
- Keep file size small; JPG or PNG work everywhere
Example
A case study shared on LinkedIn with a card showing the client’s new homepage and the title “How we rebuilt X’s website” tells people what they will see before they click. The same link with no og:image may show nothing at all.
How we handle it
We give key pages their own share image, made in the site’s design from the page title, and test the cards before launch. Platforms cache cards, so after changing an image we refresh it with LinkedIn’s Post Inspector or Facebook’s Sharing Debugger. This is part of every website design project.
Last updated 15 November 2026
