probeo

How to set the correct og:locale for this page's language and region?

og-locale-missing-or-incorrect page

The issue

A page without og:locale is declared as US English to every platform that reads its tags, whatever language it is written in. A page with the wrong value makes the same mistake on purpose. For a site in more than one language, the shares of every page outside US English describe themselves incorrectly.

The cause is that og:locale defaults to en_US in the Open Graph protocol, so leaving it out is a statement, not a blank. Templates often hard-code one value for every language the site publishes in.

Scope

Each page declares its own og:locale, which should follow the language of that page. On a multilingual site, the template has to set it per language, not once.

How to check you have it

  • By hand: view the page source and find og:locale in the <head>. Compare it with the lang attribute on <html>: lang="en-GB" should pair with og:locale set to en_GB.
  • With a tool: Facebook’s Sharing Debugger lists the og:locale it read.

Probeo doesn’t check og:locale.

The fix

Set og:locale to the page’s language and region in language_TERRITORY form.

The language is a two-letter ISO 639-1 code and the territory a two-letter ISO 3166-1 code, joined by an underscore: en_GB, es_MX, de_DE. Take it from the same source as the page’s lang attribute, so the two can’t disagree. If the page is also published in other languages, list each one with og:locale:alternate.

Done when: every page declares the locale of its own language, and the check above comes back clean.

Do not

  • Do not copy the lang attribute’s hyphenated form, such as en-GB, into og:locale.
  • Do not hard-code one locale for a site published in several languages.
  • Do not declare a locale that doesn’t match the page’s main language.

FAQ

What is the difference between og:locale and the HTML lang attribute?

The lang attribute uses a hyphen, as in en-US, and is read by browsers and assistive technology. og:locale uses an underscore, as in en_US, and is read by platforms that build share cards. Both should name the same language.

Should og:locale always include a territory code, or can it be just the language?

Use the language_TERRITORY form the protocol defines. If the language has no meaningful regional variant for the page, use its most common territory, such as es_ES.

What happens if the page content mixes multiple languages?

Declare the main language in og:locale. Use og:locale:alternate for the other languages the page is available in, one tag each.

Can og:locale be omitted if the page is in English?

For US English, leaving it out gives the right answer, because en_US is the protocol’s default. For any other variant of English, declare it.

How do social platforms use og:locale when displaying shared content?

Platforms don’t document it in detail. What is certain is that the tag is the page’s own statement of its language, and a missing one is read as en_US.

Does og:locale affect search engine indexing?

No. Google determines a page’s language from its visible content and reads hreflang annotations for regional versions. og:locale is for share previews.

Which product detects this

Probeo checks this on every page of your site as part of Site Clarity. This page explains one instance; the product tells you every page that has it.