As you probably know, Twitter cards are the ultimate marketing tool you have to make more appealing the links you share with your audience.

They give you more visibility and make your tweets more attractive (works also for viral tweets). it also will grant you a better conversion rate and increase the traffic to your website. And of course, if you’re just getting started with Twitter, this might earn you your first 1,000 followers.

What is the Twitter card validator?

It works like this: when you create a tweet, Twitter recognizes the URL in the tweet and structures it with an image instead of a simple and ugly link to the website.

But if it doesn’t shows you a preview to begin with, then you should use the Twitter card validator tool, so you know everything is ok.

But, what happens when you do it and it seems like the Twitter card validator is not even working? And if you want to know how to update the picture on the Twitter card validator? How to use the Twitter card validator? Does the twitter validator work for a summary card? Of course, it does, but then, why do you have that error on the validator?

Let’s find the answers to these questions!

How to solve the “Twitter card validator no metatags found”

The first error message is when the Twitter card validator shows the “No metatags found” message. This is also what happens when the card validator preview is correct but it does not show on Twitter. The same goes when the Twitter card validator is not showing the preview.

Things to check:

• First, you should look for all the <meta> tags required. Probably, if the warning is showing, at least one of the main ones is not there. According to each case, this could be, according to their website, the following:
  • Summary Card: Title, description, and thumbnail.
  • Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to the Summary Card, but with a prominently-featured image.
  • App Card: A Card with a direct download to a mobile app.
  • Player Card: A Card that can display video/audio/media.
• Keep in mind that the <meta charset=”utf-8”> is required.
• Also, the tags from images require a full HTTPS URL.
• And of course, remember: You need to refresh the validator page for each change you did. Just clicking the preview button is not enough. ← Read that last phrase twice.

Are your Twitter Cards not showing images? Here’s what you can do

If your image is not showing up on the card validator, this can be due to two reasons:

1. Your site has a robots.txt file that can be blocking the crawler so it can’t get the metadata.
2. Be sure that the image format is supported by Twitter.

Should you clear the cache for the Twitter Card Validator to work after doing some changes?

Usually, for using the validator you don’t need to clear the cache, it’s enough to refresh the page.

But if you want to test some cards in your timeline, you’ll need to refresh the cache.

The Twitter web crawler updates the tag information every seven days.

So, if you want to refresh the card when doing some testing, you can do it by running the URL through bit.ly. Refresh the browser, and you’ll see the updates in the timeline.

What does it mean when Twitter Card Validator says fetching the page failed because it's denied by robots txt?

As we’ve explained above, your robots.txt file could be blocking the web crawlers, including twitter’s. This can also be produced by CMS providers, like WordPress. The settings can block the crawler, so it cannot display the card.

Check your settings and see if you have this problem.

… Or httpconnectiontimeout

First, the web crawler blocking said above can also cause this problem. So first, check the robots.txt and the CMS settings.

Also, your Apache .htaccess file can be denying the requests from some directives. Remove any directives from that file.

Also remember the crawler supports downloading images up to 5MB. You’ll maybe need to resize the image (click to understand more about Twitter Image Sizes).

And, it can happen that a network lag is causing a strong delay in fetching.

That annoying moment Twitter Card Validator says everything is ok but it won’t post Card =/

This can happen when you’re using an URL with an IP address. You should always use a domain name.

Also, it can happen that Twitter is using a little more time to register the website in the card system, but it will fix itself with a little bit of time.

“Not whitelisted” warn, what does it mean?

Try checking the HTML code.

The validator is reading the metatags, but it seems that something there is not correct at all.

Usually, some closing markups missing can be the cause of this problem.

No request approval button on your validator. What to do?

Nothing to do. The button was removed in 2018. Now, no approval is needed. You just need to have the card working on the validator.

Twitter card validator is timing out for URL with port. A Fix.

If you diagnosed that the time-out is due to a port, the problem can be caused by the validator not having access to the server. This is a common issue, since many environments have some restricted access.

You can fix this by running your server on a different port. Check that the port access is public.

You can also configure the firewall to route port-specific requests. And of course, our well-known robots.txt file can create an exception to allow Twitter to access your web servers.

Looking to validate a Mailchimp URL as a Twitter Card?

If you want to use a MailChimp URL for Twitter card validator, you should begin by connecting Mailchimp to your Twitter account. Then, you can auto-post on Twitter directly from MailChimp. The Twitter Cards equivalent on MailChimp is known as Social Cards. They contain the url, an image, the title, and a brief description.

Twitter Card Validator from & for localhost. Does it exist?

Actually, it can be done. If you’re having a problem with it, try using ngrok software, which you can download from here.

You should then run your server locally, and then point ngrok to the port your local server is running on.

When doing that, you’ll obtain an URL, which you can use for your Twitter Card.

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If you're still having trouble after following these steps, the Twitter Card support page should be able to help you out. A little troubleshooting is all it should take to get your Cards back up and running.