Why Your SMS Landing Page Needs Perfect Open Graph Tags

How do link previews work in text messages?

When a message contains a link, the recipient's messaging app fetches the page and builds a preview card from its Open Graph tags, mainly og:title and og:image. If the tags are missing or unreachable, the recipient sees a bare URL or a plain gray bubble.

Apple documents the behavior for its Messages app in Technical Note TN3156. By default, Messages shows a gray bubble with the page title, domain, and a small icon. Adding og:image and og:title turns that into a rich preview with a large image. Android behavior depends on the app, such as Google Messages or Samsung Messages, and on whether the chat is SMS or RCS, so test on both platforms.

Two conditions affect whether a preview appears at all:

• Unknown senders. Most marketing texts come from numbers the recipient has not saved, and iOS has handled previews from unknown senders differently across versions, sometimes asking the user to tap before loading. Always test from an unsaved number.
• Link placement. A single URL at the end of the message previews most reliably. Several URLs in one message, or a URL buried mid-sentence, often produce no card.

A preview can also help the recipient trust the message. A clear image and title that match your brand make the link look legitimate. That matters because carriers and consumers are wary of links in texts.

Which Open Graph tags do you need?

You need og:title, og:image, og:url, og:type, and og:site_name. Add og:description for other platforms, even though Apple Messages ignores it for most pages.

A complete head for a funding landing page might carry these values:

• og:title: Working Capital for Small Businesses
• og:site_name: Example Funding
• og:description: Answer a few questions and a funding specialist will review your options.
• og:image: https://www.example.com/images/og-working-capital.jpg
• og:url: https://www.example.com/working-capital/
• og:type: website
• twitter:card: summary_large_image

Each is a meta tag in the page head, using property for og: tags and name for twitter: tags.

What technical rules do previews follow?

Serve the tags in the page's static HTML, over HTTPS, at the URL you actually send. Apple's crawler does not run JavaScript or follow meta-refresh redirects, and it caps page and image sizes.

• No JavaScript-injected tags. Metadata added by client-side scripts is invisible to previews. Render it on the server.
• Redirects: server-side redirects (HTTP 301 or 302) are followed; meta-refresh redirects are not.
• Size limits: Apple limits the main page to 1 MB and all associated resources to 10 MB total. Images under 150 px wide may be ignored or shown as icons.
• Same metadata for every user agent: do not serve different tags to mobile and desktop.
• Icon: provide a square icon of at least 108 px, such as an apple-touch-icon, because Messages falls back to it when the image fails to load.
• Link shorteners: CTIA guidelines say to use a shortener domain dedicated to your brand, not a public shared one. Public shorteners draw carrier filtering and hide who you are.

How should you design the preview image?

Use a clean, on-brand image specific to the page, and keep headline text out of it. Put the words in og:title instead. Apple advises against text in preview images because they are shown at many sizes and text can become unreadable.

1. Make it page-specific. Apple recommends og:image for images that represent the page, and icons for generic logos.
2. Keep it graphical. A product, place, or simple branded composition works. Put the message in the title.
3. Use high contrast and a clear focal point. The card is small on a phone screen.
4. Stay consistent with your brand. Colors and style should match the landing page the recipient lands on.
5. Compress it. A JPEG or PNG of a few hundred kilobytes loads quickly on cellular connections and stays well within Apple's limits.

Social platforms crop differently than Messages, so keep the important part of the image near the center.

Which mistakes break SMS link previews?

Most broken previews come from a missing or relative og:image URL, tags injected by JavaScript, meta-refresh redirects, or oversized pages and images.

• Relative image path: "/images/og.jpg" fails. Use the full https:// URL.
• Image behind authentication or a bot blocker: if the crawler cannot fetch the image, there is no image. Check your firewall and CDN rules for preview crawlers.
• Tracking redirects: a click-tracking hop that uses meta refresh or JavaScript breaks the preview. Use server-side redirects on your own domain.
• Brand name in the title: Apple treats this as duplication. Use og:site_name.
• Spammy titles: all caps, "You won," or unverifiable claims such as "Approved in minutes" look like spam to recipients and raise deceptive-advertising risk.
• Stale cache: platforms cache previews. Change the image file name when you update it.

How do you test Open Graph tags before a send?

Check the tags with a debugger, then send a test text to real iPhone and Android devices, from a number that is not in the test phone's contacts.

1. View the page source (not the rendered DOM) and confirm the og: tags are in the head.
2. Open the og:image URL directly in a private browser window to confirm it loads over HTTPS.
3. Run the URL through Meta's Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn's Post Inspector to catch missing or malformed tags.
4. Text the exact production URL, including any tracking parameters, to an iPhone and an Android phone. Send it both from a saved contact and from an unknown number.
5. Confirm the card shows your image and title, and that tapping it lands on the right page.

How do iOS and Android previews differ?

iOS Messages builds its card from og:title and og:image and uses a large image layout. Android previews vary by messaging app and by whether the conversation is SMS or RCS.

How do you get this set up for a campaign?

Treat the landing page, its policies, and its preview metadata as one package, because carriers review the page and recipients judge the preview. Our 10DLC-compliant website includes a custom-branded responsive site, Privacy Policy, Terms, SMS consent pages, DNS and SSL setup, and an OG image for SMS and social link previews. You can check an existing landing page's consent signals with our free Landing Page QA tool.

Stephen Ventura founded Full Percent in Boca Raton, Florida. He has built email systems since 1997 and SMS platforms since before the iPhone. stephenventura.com