Learn how website URL shares on Facebook…
Want to see how Facebook reads a URL on your site without having to actually share it? This is useful because you can make tweaks to the display or correct errors before you begin sharing. Follow the very simple steps below to view any URL the way Facebook would view it.
- Visit Facebook Developer Debugger at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
- Enter any full URL in the space provide and click Debug button
If the URL has already been debugged and you made changes, you can click on the Scrape Again button to get a fresh look.
How to Check and Refresh a Facebook Share URL Preview
Facebook does not display a webpage exactly as it appears in a browser. When a URL is shared, Facebook retrieves information from the page and uses its metadata to build a preview. The preview can include the page title, description, featured image, and the URL.
To check a link before sharing it, open Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and paste the complete webpage address into the URL field. Select Debug to see the information Facebook has collected for that URL. This is different from a Facebook share URL: the share URL opens a sharing dialog, while the debugger is used to inspect and refresh the link preview.
- Copy the full WordPress page or post URL, including
https://if the site uses HTTPS. - Paste the URL into the Sharing Debugger.
- Select Debug and review the displayed title, description, image, and URL.
- If you changed the page after Facebook previously checked it, select Scrape Again to request a fresh reading.
If the old title, image, or description still appears, first confirm that the changes are published on the public URL rather than only saved in WordPress. Also check that the page is not blocked from public access, does not require a login, and has a valid canonical URL. Caching can cause an older version of the page or its metadata to remain available, so clear relevant WordPress, hosting, or CDN caches before scraping again.
A preview may also differ when the page has multiple images or when Facebook cannot retrieve the selected image. Use a suitable featured image and make sure its address is publicly accessible. The debugger reports what Facebook can currently read; it does not edit the WordPress page. After correcting the page or its metadata, run Scrape Again and then test the resulting share preview.
