Featured images not showing when URLs are shared in WhatsApp

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

The preview links on WhatsApp have a limitation set by the application that is not set by other platforms such as Facebook.

The WhatsApp platform has a limit on the size of the image and it works best for images that are below 300Kb in size, even though it’s possible that some images above that might show sometimes but it’s very finicky and not consistent.

Hope that helps.

Thank you.

Hello,

In this case, please try to clear your website cache including any server-level cache of your website, and then check the URL again on WhatsApp.

If the issue still persists, then we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.

Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/

You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/

Looking forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Hello,

Checking the fallback social image closely, I noticed that is currently loaded as an optimized version of the original one and your image optimizer can only optimize it down to 500+ kb. Please refer to my screenshot below: https://i.rankmath.com/i/XAkb4K

I would suggest you optimize the image further and preferably upload it as a jpg to ensure you can lessen the file size.

I have tried that on your website and I was able to display the thumbnail:

Let us know how that goes. Thank you.

Hello,

We checked the link preview in WhatsApp again and verified that the thumbnail image is visible for your website as expected.

Please refer to the screenshot below :

When sharing a link on WhatsApp, the platform usually generates a link preview, which includes a thumbnail, title, and description. However, sometimes a thumbnail might not be visible for everyone.

The reason for this discrepancy could be caching.

WhatsApp caches link previews for a certain period.

If the thumbnail has been recently updated on the website, some users might still see the old cached version, while others see the new one.

This can result in different previews for different users.

Please clear the WhatsApp app cache on the affected devices, as it might help refresh the link preview.

We hope that helps, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.

Thank you.