What are Open Graph tags?
Open Graph (OG) tags are meta tags in your page's <head> that control how your content appears when shared on social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, and iMessage. They were developed by Facebook and are now a de facto web standard adopted by every major platform.
Essential Open Graph properties
og:title— the title shown in the social preview card. Aim for 60–90 characters.og:description— a short description of the page content shown below the title.og:image— the preview image. Recommended size: 1200×630 pixels (1.91:1 aspect ratio).og:url— the canonical URL of the page being shared.og:type— the content type:website,article,video.movie, etc.og:site_name— the name of your website, shown alongside the URL.
og:image — size, format, and requirements
The Open Graph image is the most visible part of a social share preview. Use a 1200×630 pixel image (1.91:1 aspect ratio) for best results across all platforms. Minimum size is 200×200 pixels — smaller images may be ignored. Facebook requires images to be under 8 MB; PNG and JPG are both supported. Use an absolute URL (starting with https://), not a relative path. The og:image:width and og:image:height tags help platforms avoid layout shifts while fetching the image.
Facebook Sharing Debugger
Facebook's Sharing Debugger (at developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/) shows exactly how Facebook will preview your page when shared — including which OG tags it found, any errors, and what the preview card will look like. Crucially, it also lets you force a cache refresh: Facebook caches OG data aggressively, so after updating your tags you must use the debugger to clear the cached version before your changes appear in new shares.
Use this checker to verify your OG tags are present and correctly formatted, then use the Facebook Sharing Debugger to confirm the visual preview and flush the cache.
Twitter Card tags
Twitter (now X) uses its own meta tags for preview cards. twitter:card is required and controls the card layout: summary shows a small square thumbnail, summary_large_image shows a large hero image. Twitter falls back to OG tags when its own tags are absent, so at minimum set twitter:card and rely on your OG tags for the rest.
LinkedIn and other platforms
LinkedIn reads OG tags and caches them similarly to Facebook. Use the LinkedIn Post Inspector at linkedin.com/post-inspector/ to preview and re-scrape a URL. Slack, iMessage, and WhatsApp also use OG tags for link unfurling. Most cache for 24–72 hours — a hard cache clear via the platform's debugger is the only reliable way to force an immediate update.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Facebook Sharing Debugger?
The Facebook Sharing Debugger is Facebook's official tool for previewing how a URL will appear when shared on Facebook. It shows the OG tags Facebook found, renders a preview card, flags any errors, and lets you clear Facebook's cached version of your page. You can access it at developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/.
What size should my og:image be?
Use 1200×630 pixels (1.91:1 aspect ratio) for the best result across all platforms. This is the recommended size for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter large-image cards. The minimum is 200×200 pixels. Images under 600×315 pixels may display as small thumbnails rather than large preview cards. Keep file size under 8 MB and use an absolute HTTPS URL.
What is og:title and how is it different from the page title tag?
The og:title tag sets the title shown in social media preview cards. It is separate from the HTML <title> tag used in browser tabs and search results. You can write a slightly longer or more click-friendly og:title since character limits are less strict on social platforms. When og:title is missing, most platforms fall back to the <title> tag.
Do I need both Open Graph tags and Twitter Card tags?
Not always. Twitter falls back to OG tags when Twitter-specific tags are missing — so og:title, og:description, and og:image will populate the Twitter preview even without twitter:title etc. The one exception is twitter:card, which has no OG equivalent and must be set to control the card layout. For full control, set both sets of tags.