OG image missing or unreachable

On every live page we look for og:image and, for the URL we find, actually verify that the image exists: a request goes out and we wait for a 200 with a content type of image/*. The finding is raised when the element is missing or when the image is unreachable.

That is how it differs from STR-07 in the core set, which checks only the presence of og:title and og:description and ignores the image entirely. SEO-06 goes further and is the only check in the whole audit that actually downloads somebody else's file to confirm it is there.

What the check does not do: it does not judge the image's dimensions or aspect ratio (and those are why a preview often shows as a small icon instead of a large image), it does not check twitter:image, and it does not judge whether the image makes sense for the page.

The finding is page-level and informational: it costs no score at all.

We will put it as plainly as with STR-07: Open Graph has no documented effect on how a search engine or a language model understands your page. It is a protocol for link previews on social networks and in chat apps, nothing more.

So of all forty paid-module codes this one has the least consequence, and it is still worth a look, because it catches a specific, verified fact: a link to an image that does not lead to an image. That is not a guess; we genuinely asked that URL.

An unreachable image is usually a symptom of something bigger: deleted media, a URL left over from staging, or an image behind a login. Not worth it for the preview; worth a few minutes of checking.

When to skip it without guilt: admin areas, internal tools and pages behind a login. Those links are never shared and the element is wasted work. Which is why the finding is informational.

The <head> takes an absolute URL to a publicly reachable image:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://your-domain/preview.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">

• property, not name. An element written as <meta name="og:image"> is invalid under the protocol and most networks skip it. It is the commonest Open Graph mistake there is.
• An absolute URL. A relative path is the second commonest: the network fetches the image itself and has nothing to resolve a relative path against.
• The image must be reachable without a login and without cookies. The network fetches it as an anonymous visitor.
• 1200 × 630 px is the ratio that renders as a large preview. A smaller image shows as a small square thumbnail on most networks.
• Force a refresh after fixing: previews are cached and the old version can persist for a long time.

You can verify it with one command, no tooling required, and it is the same test the audit runs:

curl -sI https://your-domain/preview.jpg | grep -iE '^HTTP/|^content-type'