When someone shares a link on TikTok – in bios, comments, or direct messages – TikTokSpider fetches the page to generate a preview card. This is a distinct crawler from ByteDance’s Bytespider (used for AI training). TikTokSpider reads standard Open Graph meta tags, does not execute JavaScript, and respects robots.txt.
This guide covers how TikTokSpider works, which tags it reads, image handling, cache behavior, and common issues – including the important distinction between TikTokSpider and Bytespider, and troubleshooting link-in-bio previews.