How a link preview is made
When someone pastes your link into WhatsApp or LinkedIn, the app fetches the page and reads a handful of tags in its <head>. Those tags — not your page's design — decide the picture, the title and the line of text under it. If they're missing, the app guesses, and the guess is usually a bare link.
| What's shown | Tag apps read first | Fallback |
|---|---|---|
| Title | og:title | the page's <title> |
| Text under it | og:description | meta description |
| Picture | og:image | usually none |
| Your name | og:site_name | the domain |
| X's card size | twitter:card | a small card |
The tags to add
<meta property="og:title" content="Custom cakes in Koregaon Park, Pune"> <meta property="og:description" content="Birthday and wedding cakes, baked fresh every morning. Order by 6pm for tomorrow."> <meta property="og:image" content="https://yourbusiness.com/og/cakes.jpg"> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Rao's Bakery"> <meta property="og:url" content="https://yourbusiness.com/cakes"> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
The image address must be a full https:// URL that loads for anyone — not a path, and not an image behind a login.
Why it matters in India especially
Most links to a small business are shared on WhatsApp — in family groups, neighbourhood groups, customer chats. A link that shows a photo and a clear title looks trustworthy and gets tapped; a bare blue link looks like spam. Fixing the preview is ten minutes of work for every share that follows.
Then make the page itself findable
Previews are what people see when your link is shared. Search engines and AI assistants read the same page for different things — check your Google result, your structured data, and whether AI crawlers are allowed in. Or run the full check on your home page.