Question 1

What is the difference between meta tags and Open Graph tags?

Accepted Answer

Standard meta tags (title, description, robots, viewport, canonical) are read by search engines like Google to rank and display your page in search results. Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, og:url) are read by social platforms — Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, and Pinterest — to render preview cards when a link is shared. Twitter Card tags (twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:image) are an X-specific layer that overrides OG when present. All three live in <head> and can coexist; ideally they tell the same story.

Question 2

What is the ideal length for a meta title and description in 2026?

Accepted Answer

Title: 50–60 characters. Google truncates around 60 (sometimes 55 on mobile) and renders an ellipsis. Description: 120–160 characters. Google truncates around 155–160 in desktop SERPs, slightly less on mobile. Anything longer is wasted; anything shorter leaves CTR-boosting real estate on the table. Our previewer renders a realistic Google SERP and highlights titles/descriptions in green (good), yellow (borderline), or red (over the threshold).

Question 3

Why is my Open Graph image not showing on Facebook / LinkedIn / Slack?

Accepted Answer

Five common causes: (1) og:image is a relative URL — it must be absolute https://; (2) the image is smaller than 200×200 px — Facebook silently drops it; (3) the image is too large (>8 MB or wider than 5000 px) and gets rejected; (4) the URL returns a 404, 403, or non-200 status; (5) the image was added recently and Facebook's cache is stale — re-scrape via the Facebook Sharing Debugger. Our previewer flags missing og:image immediately and renders a "no image" card so the failure mode is obvious.

Question 4

What is the difference between summary and summary_large_image on X (Twitter)?

Accepted Answer

"summary" produces a small thumbnail-style card with the image left-aligned at ~120×120 px and the title/description to its right. "summary_large_image" produces a full-bleed image card with the title/description below, sized at roughly 1200×628 (16:9-ish). Use summary_large_image for hero blog posts and marketing pages; use summary for utility links and reference content. Both fall back to Open Graph when explicit twitter:* tags are missing.

Question 5

Is my HTML sent to any server?

Accepted Answer

No. The entire analysis — DOM parsing, tag extraction, length validation, Open Graph rule checks, and preview rendering — happens in your browser. We do not POST your HTML anywhere. This means you can paste raw output from staging environments, pre-launch landing pages, or internal tools without any privacy risk. (The only exception: og:image and twitter:image URLs are rendered by your browser using a normal <img> tag, so those public image URLs are fetched directly from their origin.)

Question 6

What is a canonical URL and why do I need one?

Accepted Answer

A canonical URL (`<link rel="canonical" href="https://...">`) tells Google which URL is the authoritative one when multiple paths render the same content — e.g. `?utm_source=email`, `/blog/post?ref=twitter`, `/blog/post/`, and `/blog/post` are often the same page. Without a canonical, those variants compete with each other for ranking and split the link equity. Always set canonical to the clean, absolute, https:// version of the URL.

Question 7

Does Google still read the keywords meta tag?

Accepted Answer

No. Google publicly stopped using the `<meta name="keywords">` tag for ranking in 2009. Other search engines (Yandex) may still consider it, but for the vast majority of SEO use cases it is dead weight. We list it in our extraction output for completeness but do not flag its absence as an issue.

Question 8

How do I test meta tags on a page that is not live yet?

Accepted Answer

That is exactly what this tool is for. Copy the rendered HTML from your dev tools (right-click → View Source, or in Chrome DevTools: Elements panel → right-click <html> → Edit as HTML → Copy), then paste into the textarea. Because every check runs offline in your browser, your unreleased page never reaches our servers. Once live, you can re-verify with Facebook's Sharing Debugger, X's Card Validator, and Google's URL Inspection tool.

Question 9

Why does Google sometimes ignore my meta description and show its own snippet?

Accepted Answer

Google reserves the right to synthesize a snippet from page content if it believes that better matches the user's query. This is normal. To increase the odds Google uses your description: (1) make it 120–160 characters; (2) make it relevant to the page's primary keyword; (3) write it as a clear answer or value proposition; (4) avoid stuffing keywords. If Google still substitutes, the page content is probably better at answering that specific query — which is actually a good outcome.

Tag	Sweet Spot	Max	Truncated By
title	50–60 chars	70 chars	Google SERP (~60)
meta description	120–160 chars	320 chars	Google SERP (~155 mobile, ~160 desktop)
og:title	≤ 60 chars	95 chars (FB)	Facebook (~95), LinkedIn (~70)
og:description	≤ 200 chars	300 chars	Facebook (~300)
og:image	1200×630 (1.91:1)	5000×5000, 8 MB	Min 200×200 or dropped

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