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Open Graph metadata is missing required properties

LowConfirmedQuick winseo.opengraph.incomplete

What this check looks for

When this page is shared on a social platform or in a chat app, the preview is assembled from Open Graph tags. ‹missing› of the four required properties are absent, so the preview will be guessed at or will not appear.

Why it matters

A shared link with no preview image and a guessed title gets noticeably fewer clicks than one with a proper card. The tags cost four lines and are read by every major platform.

When the check passes, your report says: “Open Graph metadata carries all four required properties”.

What it costs your score

When this check fails it removes 5 points from your SEO score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. SEO carries a weight of 5 in the overall score.

It shares the seo.social family ceiling of 5 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from SEO. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.

Severity
low
Default confidence
confirmed
Status when triggered
warn
Deduction
5 points
Family cap
seo.social · 5
Category
SEO
Module
Seo audit
Fix owned by
user
In the ruleset since
2026.09

How the whole score is calculated

How to fix it

Add the four required Open Graph properties to the page head.

They control how the link looks when it is shared, and an incomplete set means the platform guesses.

  1. Add og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url.

  2. Use an absolute URL for og:image, at least 1200×630 pixels for a large card.

  3. Set og:url to the page's canonical URL so shared variants consolidate.

  4. Add og:description too — it is not required but it is what fills the card's body text.

How to confirm it worked

  • curl -sS ‹url› | grep -i 'property="og:' — should show all four

A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.

Remediation by platform

Page HTML
<meta property="og:title" content="Sourdough starter guide">
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/guides/starter/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/starter-card.png">
<meta property="og:description" content="How to keep a starter alive, and what to do when it stops rising.">

  • Open Graph uses property=, not name=. A tag written with name= is ignored by most consumers, which is the commonest reason a card that looks configured does not appear.

Technical detail

Missing: ‹missing list›.

The Open Graph protocol defines four required properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. Consumers that find them incomplete fall back to guessing — usually the <title> and the first large image on the page, which is often a logo or an unrelated illustration.

This has no effect on search ranking and is not a search finding at all; it is here because this is the check that reads the page's head, and because it is a cheap and visible improvement.

Two details worth getting right: og:image should be an absolute URL to an image of at least 1200×630 for a large card, and og:url should be the canonical URL, so that shares of a parameterised version of the link consolidate onto the same page.

Standards and references

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Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.

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