What WhatsApp and Google see when someone shares your website

Where the preview comes from

When a link is shared, WhatsApp fetches the page and reads a few tags from its code, called Open Graph tags. The important ones are the title (og:title), a short description (og:description) and an image (og:image). If they are missing, the chat shows the address and little else.

Facebook, LinkedIn, X and many email apps read the same tags, so getting them right once improves every share.

Why some modern websites show nothing at all

Some websites are built so that the browser assembles the whole page with JavaScript after it arrives. The page the server first sends is almost empty: a title and a blank container.

People with a normal browser never notice. But link previews do not run that JavaScript. They read the empty page, find no tags, and show a bare link. Search engines are better at running JavaScript than link previews are, but it is slower and less predictable than giving them the content directly.

The handful of tags that matter

• A page title that names your business and what you offer. It is the blue headline in Google results.
• A meta description of one or two sentences. Google often shows it under your name.
• Open Graph title, description and image for link previews. The image works best at 1200 by 630 pixels, with your name readable at a small size.
• Structured data that describes your business in a format search engines understand: your name, address, phone number and opening hours.

How to fix it

On most website platforms the first three are settings or a plugin. If your site is built entirely in the browser, the lasting fix is to send the key pages from the server already filled in, which modern frameworks support, rather than adding tags the preview will never see.

Our free health report checks whether your homepage has a working share preview and whether it tells Google what your business is, alongside its speed on a phone.