Definition

Open Graph is a metadata protocol, originally introduced by Facebook, that uses `<meta property="og:...">` tags in the page head to expose the title, image, description, type and URL a sharing platform should use when rendering a link preview.

Open Graph tags are read primarily by social networks and messaging apps to build link previews, but Google also lists `og:title` among the sources it may consider when generating a title link in search results. The tags do not directly influence rankings; they shape how shared URLs are presented outside the page itself.

Examples

• Article shared on a social network

  A publisher includes `og:title`, `og:description` and `og:image` on a news article. When the URL is pasted into a social feed, the platform renders the chosen image and headline rather than guessing from the page body.

• Title link fallback in Google

  Google Search Central lists `og:title` among the sources it draws on to generate a result's title link, so a clear Open Graph title can influence how a page is labelled when Google rewrites the SERP title.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Influencing your title links
• The Open Graph protocol — ogp.me

Related terms

• Title Tag
  The HTML `<title>` element on a page. Google often uses its content to generate the clickable headline (the "title link") in search results.
• Meta Description
  A short HTML attribute summarising a page, often used by search engines as the snippet shown beneath a result's title.
• JSON-LD
  A JSON-based syntax for embedding structured data in a script tag, used to describe a page's content to search engines and other parsers.
• Schema Markup
  Structured data added to a page that describes its content to search engines in a machine-readable format.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• Meta Title Optimisation
• Meta Description Optimisation