probeo

What does probeo check in Open Graph?

Open Graph tags decide what a link looks like when someone shares it: the title, the description and the image on the card in a feed, a chat or a message. When one is missing or unusable, the platform guesses or leaves it out. Nothing on the page itself looks different, so the first sign is a poor preview somewhere else.

What probeo checks

  • Article tagsA page with og:type article but no article:published_time or article:author leaves its date and author out of the metadata. How to add them.
  • Data qualityDuplicate Open Graph tags make social previews unpredictable: platforms disagree on which value to use, so titles, images and descriptions vary between shares.
  • Image alt and sizeAn og:image without og:image:alt has no description, and one without a width and height may not show the first time a link is shared on Facebook.
  • OG imageOpen Graph properties like og:image and og:url that use relative or HTTP URLs. Social platforms need absolute HTTPS URLs to fetch and show the shared content.
  • OG localeThe og:locale property is missing or does not match the page's language and region. Without it, the Open Graph protocol assumes the page is in US English.
  • Recommended tagsWithout og:title, og:type and og:site_name, social platforms fall back to imprecise defaults. Adding the three tags controls how your pages look when shared.
  • Required tagsWithout og:image, og:description and og:locale, social platforms build incomplete or wrong previews when a page is shared. Which tags to add, and how to fix it.
  • Title and description lengthAn og:title over 95 characters or an og:description over 300 is cut off in a share preview, often before its point. How to write them for sharing.
  • Twitter cardWithout twitter:card, a link shared on X has no declared card type, and a twitter:image without its alt text has no description. How to add both.
  • URLThe og:url property does not match the page's canonical URL, which creates confusion about which URL represents the page when it is shared on social platforms.

How probeo checks it

Probeo reads the <meta> tags in the page’s HTML: og:* properties, article:* properties and twitter:* names. A page is checked only once it declares at least one og: property. A page with no Open Graph tags at all is not reported for missing ones.

  • Errors. A missing og:title, og:description or og:image, and an og:image URL that doesn’t start with https://.
  • Length. An og:title over 95 characters or an og:description over 300 is a warning.
  • The image. A missing og:image:alt, or a missing og:image:width or og:image:height, is a warning.
  • Type and URL. A missing og:type or og:url is a warning.
  • Articles. When og:type is article, a missing article:published_time or article:author is a warning.
  • Twitter Cards. A missing twitter:card is a warning, and so is a twitter:image without a twitter:image:alt.

Where a property appears more than once, probeo reads the first.

What this does not cover

Probeo checks the tags, not the result. It doesn’t fetch the og:image to see that it loads, measure the image itself or compare og:url with the canonical. It doesn’t check og:locale or og:site_name. To see the card a platform actually builds, use its own tool, such as Facebook’s Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn’s Post Inspector.

Common questions

Why isn’t a page with no Open Graph tags reported?

A page without any og: property hasn’t opted into Open Graph, and reporting every tag it lacks would bury the pages that use it badly. Probeo starts checking once a page declares one. If a page should have a share preview, adding its first tags brings it into the check.

Why is a non-HTTPS og:image an error and not a warning?

Because the image is the card’s main element, and probeo’s check is written for the apps that need it served over HTTPS to show it: its message names Slack, WhatsApp and Teams. A relative URL fails the same check, since it doesn’t start with https:// either.

Do I still need Twitter Card tags if the page has Open Graph?

X falls back to Open Graph for the title, the description and the image, but twitter:card is what chooses the card’s layout. Probeo warns when it’s missing for that reason.

Which product this is part of

Open Graph is part of Site Clarity.