probeo

How long should og:title and og:description be?

og:og:title page

The issue

A long og:title or og:description is cut off in the preview a link gets when it is shared. What survives is whatever came first, which is often a brand name or a lead-in rather than the reason to click. The page itself looks fine, so the trimmed preview goes unnoticed.

The cause is usually a template that copies the page’s SEO title or the opening of the body text into the Open Graph tags without writing them for sharing.

Scope

Each page that declares at least one og: property is checked. Probeo reads the first og:title and the first og:description in the HTML and counts their characters.

How to check you have it

  • In probeo: the page reports og:title too long (N chars, max 95) or og:description too long (N chars, max 300), as a warning, with the length found. They are stored as og:og:title and og:og:description.
  • By hand: view the page source, copy the content of og:title and og:description, and count the characters.
  • With a tool: Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn’s Post Inspector show the preview each platform builds from the tags.

The fix

Write an og:title of 95 characters or fewer and an og:description of 300 or fewer, with the point first.

The share title can differ from the page’s <title>: it doesn’t need the site name, since previews usually show the site’s domain. The description is a sentence or two on why the page is worth opening, not the first paragraph of the body.

<meta property="og:title" content="How to change the registered agent for an LLC">
<meta property="og:description" content="The form, the fee and the timing for each state, and what happens to mail sent to the old agent while the change is processed.">

Done when: both tags fit within their limits and read well on their own, and the check above comes back clean.

Do not

  • Do not fill og:description with the start of the body text.
  • Do not repeat the site name in og:title when og:site_name carries it.
  • Do not trim mid-word to fit; rewrite the sentence.

FAQ

Where do 95 and 300 come from?

They are probeo’s limits. Each platform trims to its own length and layout, which also changes between desktop and mobile, so a shorter tag is safer than one that just fits.

Does this check the page’s <title> too?

No. The page’s <title> is checked separately, with its own range; see title. This check reads only the Open Graph tags.

What if the page has no og:title?

Then probeo reports Missing og:title instead; see recommended tags. A page with no og: properties at all isn’t checked for Open Graph.

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.