Open Graph tags are a small set of meta tags, og:title, og:description, og:image and og:url chief among them, that tell a platform what to show when a page's link is pasted into a chat, a post or a message. Without them, the platform has to guess, and the guess is usually a bare line of text with no image. Auditaar reads this set on every crawled page and scores gaps in it under the Conversion pillar, because a card nobody wants to click is a visitor lost before the page ever loads.
What does a broken preview actually look like?
The same link, shared twice, with one difference: whether the page declared its own card or left the platform to assemble one.
The same link, shared with no Open Graph tags and with a complete set. og:image, og:title and og:description are the whole difference.
Which tags actually control the card?
Five tags cover nearly every platform's preview. Auditaar checks all five on every page it reads.
| Tag | Controls | If it's missing |
|---|---|---|
| og:title | The headline shown on the card, standing in for the page title | The platform falls back to the raw <title>, often longer than a card can show. |
| og:type | What kind of object the page is (article, website, product); one of the four properties the Open Graph protocol itself requires | Most platforms still render a card, but the page fails the protocol's own completeness rule. |
| og:image | The thumbnail, and usually the single biggest driver of a click on a shared link | Most platforms render a plain text card with no image at all. |
| og:url | The canonical address the share is credited to, independent of tracking parameters | A share can get credited to the wrong URL, or to a parameterized duplicate. |
| twitter:card | Which card layout X renders: a small summary or a large image | X falls back to Open Graph alone, usually with a smaller image. |
Five tags cover nearly every platform's link-preview card. Auditaar checks all five on every crawled page.
The four ways Open Graph breaks
- A required property is missing. The Open Graph protocol requires four properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. Leave any one off and the platform fills the gap itself, usually with the raw page title or the first text it can find, which is often a cookie notice or a navigation label. og:description is useful but optional under the spec, so its absence alone does not fail this check.
- og:image or og:url is written as a relative path. A platform's scraper fetches the tag's value as a standalone URL. A relative path with no scheme and host resolves to nothing, so the image never loads even though the tag is present.
- og:url disagrees with the page's own canonical. When the two point at different URLs, a share gets credited to the wrong address instead of the one the page considers authoritative.
- twitter:card holds a value outside the four it documents. X falls back to Open Graph alone when the value is invalid, usually rendering a smaller card than the page intended.
How do you check your own pages?
- View the page's source and search for `property="og:` to see the raw values, not the rendered page; some templates set Open Graph tags only on certain routes.
- Open the og:image value directly in a browser tab. If it does not load over HTTPS as a standalone URL, no platform's scraper will load it either.
- Compare the og:url value against the page's own `rel=canonical` tag. They should match exactly, including the scheme and any trailing slash.
- Paste the live URL into a platform's own link-preview tool to see the card it actually builds, since most platforms cache what they scrape and will not re-read the page on every share.
What does this look like in a real audit?
A missing Open Graph property is one of the quieter findings in the Conversion pillar, and one of the cheapest to fix.
12 of 40 pages are missing a required Open Graph property
Open Graph FAQ
Do Open Graph tags affect search rankings?
No. Open Graph is read by the platforms that render link previews, not by a search engine's ranking algorithm. Auditaar scores it inside the Conversion pillar, as a click a visitor does or does not make, not inside Findability.
Do I need twitter:card if og:image and og:title are already set?
X reads Open Graph as a fallback, so a page with complete Open Graph tags still gets a card on X even without twitter:card. Setting twitter:card lets a page pick the larger image layout, which Open Graph alone does not control.
Why does my card still show the old image after I changed it?
Most platforms cache the card the first time a link is shared and do not re-scrape it on every subsequent share. The fix is usually correct; the cached card just has not been invalidated yet.
Auditaar checks og:title, og:type, og:image, og:url and twitter:card across every crawled page, and scores gaps in the required set into the Conversion pillar alongside the rest of the funnel. Run an audit, or read why your traffic doesn't convert.