What are Open Graph tags?

Open Graph (OG) tags are meta tags originally created by Facebook that control how web pages appear when shared on social media platforms. They're now used by Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, Slack, and many other platforms to generate rich previews with images, titles, and descriptions.

The protocol transforms web pages into social graph objects that display consistently across platforms.

Core Open Graph tags:

  • og:title - The title of your content, typically 60-90 characters
  • og:type - Content type like "website", "article", "video", "product"
  • og:image - URL of the preview image, recommended 1200x630px
  • og:url - Canonical URL of the page
  • og:description - Brief description, usually 150-300 characters

Additional useful tags:

  • og:site_name - Name of the overall website
  • og:locale - Language/locale like "en_US"
  • og:video - URL to video content
  • og:audio - URL to audio content
  • og:image:width and og:image:height - Dimensions in pixels
  • og:image:alt - Accessibility description

Article-specific tags:

  • article:published_time
  • article:modified_time
  • article:author
  • article:section
  • article:tag

Example:

<meta property="og:title" content="Amazing Product Launch">

Note that OG tags use property attribute instead of name.

For web scraping:

OG tags are valuable because they:

  • Often contain the most important content summary
  • Provide high-quality featured images
  • Reveal content categorization and metadata
  • Indicate canonical URLs and publication dates

Important note:

Platforms cache OG data, so changes may not appear immediately when sharing - use Facebook's Sharing Debugger or similar tools to force a refresh.

Our Meta Tag Extractor identifies and organizes all Open Graph tags for easy analysis.

Try our Meta Tag Extractor →

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