🔍 Overview

If you have configured an og:image meta tag through the Search Atlas WordPress plugin but it is not appearing in your page source — while other Open Graph tags like og:title, og:description, and og:url display correctly — you are experiencing a known conflict between OTTO-managed pages and the plugin's Open Graph meta box.

This article explains why this happens and walks you through the steps to resolve it.

⚙️ Why This Happens

When OTTO is active on a page, it takes control of on-page optimisations, including meta tag output. In some cases, OTTO's output overrides values set manually in the Search Atlas plugin's OG/social meta box, causing your custom og:image value to be silently ignored in the rendered HTML.

This is a known issue currently under active review by the Search Atlas engineering team. The fix — which ensures customer-set OG and social tags always take priority over OTTO's suggestions — is in the review stage and will be released in an upcoming update.

🛠️ How to Resolve It Now

While the permanent fix is being released, use the following workaround to ensure your og:image tag renders correctly.

1. Check your OTTO activation status. Navigate to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) in the left sidebar. Locate the page in question and confirm whether OTTO is active on it.
2. Review OTTO's og:image suggestion. Inside OTTO for that page, check if OTTO has generated its own og:image value. If it has, this value is currently taking precedence over your plugin setting.
3. Set the og:image directly inside OTTO. Instead of relying on the Search Atlas plugin's meta box for that field, enter your desired image URL into OTTO's Open Graph image field. This ensures the value is output by the same system controlling the page and will render correctly in the page source.
4. Verify the tag in your page source. After saving, open your page in a browser, right-click, and select View Page Source. Search for og:image to confirm the tag is now present with the correct image URL.
5. Test your social sharing preview. Use a tool such as the Facebook Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn Post Inspector to confirm the image appears correctly when your URL is shared on social platforms.

📋 Additional Checks

If the og:image tag is still missing after following the steps above, review the following:

• Plugin conflicts: Ensure no other SEO or Open Graph plugin (such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All in One SEO) is installed and active. Multiple plugins outputting Open Graph tags can cause conflicts where tags are duplicated or suppressed.
• Image URL format: Confirm the image URL is absolute (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/image.jpg) and not relative. Social crawlers require a full URL to fetch the image.
• Image accessibility: Make sure the image is publicly accessible and not blocked by a login wall, password protection, or robots.txt rules.
• Caching: Clear your site cache, CDN cache, and any server-side cache after making changes. Cached HTML can serve an older version of the page source that does not include your updated tags.

🚀 What to Expect After the Fix

Once the engineering update is released, customer-configured OG and social meta tag values set in the Search Atlas WordPress plugin will always take priority over OTTO's automatically generated suggestions. You will no longer need to enter the og:image value inside OTTO separately — the value from the plugin's meta box will render correctly on all OTTO-managed pages without any additional steps.

💡 Best Practice Recommendation

Until the update is live, we recommend managing all Open Graph values — including og:image, og:title, and og:description — directly within OTTO for any page where OTTO is active. This keeps all meta tag output under a single system and prevents conflicts from occurring.

🙋 Need More Help?

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