Open Graph glossary

Every term used across these guides, defined in one sentence. Each one has its own link, so you can point someone straight at it.

Open Graph: A protocol, published at ogp.me, that lets a page describe itself to other services with meta tags prefixed og:. Facebook created it in 2010 and most platforms now read it.
og:title: The headline a platform shows on your share card. It replaces the page title in previews, so it can be shorter and punchier than the title you set for search.
og:description: One or two sentences shown under the headline on a share card. Most platforms cut it off between 100 and 200 characters.
og:image: The picture shown with your link. It must be an absolute URL, and 1200x630 pixels is the size that works everywhere.
og:type: What kind of thing the page is: website, article, product, video.movie and so on. Some types unlock extra tags, such as article:published_time.
og:url: The address a platform should treat as the page's real home. Point it at the page itself so shares from tracking links all fold into one entry.
twitter:card: Tells X which card layout to use. summary_large_image gives the full-width picture; summary gives a small square thumbnail.
Canonical URL: A link tag that names the preferred address for a page when several addresses show the same content. Search engines fold the duplicates into it.
Meta description: The summary a search engine may show under your result. It is not a ranking factor, but it strongly affects whether anyone clicks.
Favicon: The small icon for your site. Browsers show it in tabs and bookmarks, and Google shows it next to your result on mobile search.
Scraper: The bot a platform sends to read your page when someone pastes a link. It reads the HTML only — it does not run your JavaScript in most cases.
Unfurling: What Slack and Discord call the act of turning a pasted link into a preview card. Same mechanism, different word.
SERP: Search engine results page. Your title, description and favicon are what you control on it.
Aspect ratio: Width divided by height. Share images want roughly 1.91:1, which is where 1200x630 comes from.
Client-side rendering: Building the page in the browser with JavaScript. Because most scrapers do not run JavaScript, meta tags added this way are often invisible to them.
Structured data: Machine-readable facts about a page, usually JSON-LD in a script tag. Separate from Open Graph, and read by search engines rather than social platforms.

Now check it on your own site.

Scan a site Generate images