Troubleshooting for Scheduling and Publishing

Why is my link not displaying as expected

Updated 3 months ago

When you schedule posts with links, the link, image preview, or URL may not always appear as expected. This guide walks you through the most common scenarios and how to resolve them.

What you see: Your published link displays as t.mtrbio.com/... or similar instead of your original URL.

What's happening: The URL shortener is enabled in your Global Presets. This feature automatically replaces your links with a shorter URL at publish time.

Metricool's shortener is privacy-focused — it doesn't track any interactions with your content, unlike other link shorteners.

How to fix it:

  • If you want your original URL to appear: Disable the URL shortener in Global Presets in the composer

  • If you want to replace your original URL: Keep the shortener enabled

For more details, see Scheduling content with links.

This issue depends on the social network and the website you're linking to, not Metricool. The preview you see in Metricool is an approximation — the final image is decided by Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

What you see: When you schedule a post with a link, the preview in Metricool shows the correct image. But when published on Facebook or LinkedIn, a different image appears, the website logo, or no image at all.

Why this happens

Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn don't "read" the article image directly. They look for a special tag on the web page called Open Graph image (og:image).

If that tag doesn't exist or isn't properly configured:

  • Facebook may show the first image it finds on the page (usually the logo)

  • LinkedIn may not show any image or display an incorrect one

How to fix it

1. Check if your page has the correct image configured

Use the official tools from each social network:

These tools show you exactly what image the social network is detecting and if there's any problem.

2. Fix the og:image tag on your website

If the image is incorrect or an error appears, your web page needs to add or fix the og:image tag. This is something the person responsible for your website needs to configure in the HTML code.

3. Force the update on the social network

Once the tag is corrected on your website, use the Facebook or LinkedIn tools to "scrape again" the page. This forces the social network to update the image it will display.

Alternative: If you can't modify the web page, manually add your own image to the post instead of using the link preview. This gives you full control over which image is displayed. Learn more in Scheduling content with links.

Why the preview differs from the published post

It's normal for the preview in Metricool not to match exactly what gets published.

  • Image previews: Metricool generates a preview based on available information, but the final image is always decided by the social network based on what it finds on the linked page. Use the Facebook and LinkedIn debugging tools to see what image they're actually detecting.

  • URL appearance: If you have the URL shortener enabled, you'll see your original URL in the Metricool preview, but the published post will show the shortened t.mtrbio.com link.

  • Link previews: If you add your own image to the post, the link preview will be replaced by your image. The link will appear as regular text instead of a preview card.

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