Open Graph Meta Tags — How to Control Social Media Previews

When you share a URL on social media, the preview that appears is controlled by Open Graph meta tags. Learn how to make your links look great everywhere.

2026-03-01

You share a link on Facebook, Twitter, or Slack, and it shows up as an ugly URL with no preview. Or worse — it shows the wrong image, a truncated title, and a generic description. This happens when your page doesn't have Open Graph (OG) meta tags.

What are Open Graph tags?

Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook in 2010 that lets you control how your content appears when shared on social media. It uses meta tags in your HTML <head> to specify the title, description, image, and type of your page.

The essential OG tags

og:title — The title shown in the preview. Keep it under 60 characters. Make it compelling but accurate.

og:description — A brief description of the content. 155 characters max. This is your elevator pitch.

og:image — The preview image. This is the single most important tag for click-through rates. Use 1200×630 pixels for best results across platforms.

og:url — The canonical URL of your page. This tells platforms which URL to attribute shares to.

og:type — The type of content: "website," "article," "product," etc.

Twitter-specific tags

Twitter (X) uses its own card meta tags alongside Open Graph. The key ones are twitter:card (set to "summary_large_image" for big previews) and twitter:site (your Twitter handle).

Testing your tags

Before sharing widely, test how your page looks. Toolozo's OG Preview tool fetches any URL and shows you exactly how it will appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms. Fix issues before they go live — first impressions matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What size should an OG image be?

1200×630 pixels is the recommended size. It works well across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and most other platforms.

Do OG tags affect SEO?

Not directly — Google doesn't use OG tags for ranking. But better social previews lead to more clicks, shares, and traffic, which indirectly helps SEO.