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image.refused-unprobed

Image refused to the API's crawler, probe incomplete. Level: Error.

When it is raised

The API's crawler (PolymorphismOGPreview/1.0, or the user agent chosen with ?ua=) requested the image URL, followed at most 7 redirects (8 requests), and got HTTP 401 or 403. The API then sent a second GET (the probe) for the same URL from its own server with the facebookexternalhit/1.1 user agent, and the probe ended without an HTTP status. That covers a network error, a timeout or a host that does not resolve, the time budget shared by the whole check running out, a response body that stalls before any bytes arrive, a redirect to a URL that is not http or https or to a host the API refuses to fetch, and a request redirected 8 or more times. If the first request got any other error status, including 429, the finding is image.http-error instead.

What it does to a shared link

The image host refused the API's crawler, and any client refused in the same way cannot fetch the image. Whether a request carrying the facebookexternalhit/1.1 user agent is refused too is unknown. No dimensions, size, format or crop could be measured.

How to fix it

  1. Run the check again; if the probe completes, the result becomes image.refused-allowlisted or image.refused-everywhere.
  2. Find the rule that refuses the image: authentication, signed or expiring URLs, hotlink protection, or a bot filter on the image host or its CDN.
  3. Serve the card image publicly, with no cookie, login, Referer or user-agent requirement.
  4. Confirm the result by requesting the image with GET and a non-browser user agent, following redirects, and checking for status 200.
curl -sL -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -A "ExampleBot/1.0" https://example.com/card.png # expect: 200

Related checks

Sources