Tags Instagram uses

Instagram reads the same OG tags as Facebook via Meta’s shared crawler:

<meta property="og:title" content="Page Title">
<meta property="og:description" content="A brief description of the page">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">

• og:title – preview title in DMs and Story link stickers
• og:description – shown in DMs below the title; often omitted in Stories
• og:image – the preview image; cropping differs between DMs and Stories
• og:url – canonical URL; domain displayed in the preview
• og:type – parsed but doesn’t visibly change the preview format

Image dimension hints

og:image:width and og:image:height let the crawler render the preview immediately without downloading the image first:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630">

Without these, the first person to share your URL may see a preview with no image while the crawler downloads it in the background.

Limited preview contexts

Instagram only shows link previews in DMs (compact card with image, title, description, domain) and Story link stickers (image and title in a tappable overlay; description usually omitted).

og:title and og:image are the most impactful tags. og:description is only reliably visible in DMs.

Fallback behavior

Same fallback chain as Facebook:

The heuristic image picker is unreliable – may grab a small icon, an ad, or the wrong photo. Always set og:image explicitly.

Facebook-specific tags

fb:app_id and fb:admins are parsed by the shared crawler but do nothing on Instagram. They only matter within Facebook itself.