Open Graph
SEO and AI visibility
SEO and AI visibility
Open Graph is a set of meta tags that controls how a link looks when shared, for example on WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Facebook: title, description and image.
The Open Graph protocol was originally created by Facebook and is now an open standard. You place the tags in a page's head, such as og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url and og:type.
When you share a link, the platform reads those tags and builds a preview from them. Without tags, the platform guesses. That can mean the wrong image, cut-off text or no preview at all.
For the image, 1200 by 630 pixels works well on most platforms. Keep the file small: some apps simply drop a file that is too heavy. X also uses its own twitter: tags, but falls back to Open Graph when they are missing.
Open Graph has no direct effect on your Google ranking. A clear preview can, however, make more people click a shared link.
Tip
Platforms keep a preview for a while. If you change the tags, you won't see it straight away. The sharing tools of LinkedIn or Facebook let you fetch the page again.
Related terms
- MetadataMetadata is information about a page rather than its visible content: title, description, canonical, language settings, robots rules and the data social platforms use for a preview.
- Meta titleThe meta title (title tag) is a page's title in the code; Google usually uses it as the blue headline in search results and the browser shows it in the tab.
- Meta descriptionThe meta description is the short summary in a page's code that Google often shows as the descriptive text under the title in search results.
- Structured dataStructured data is schema.org code that states explicitly what a page contains: a product, an article, an organisation or a question and answer.