ogdescription

ogdescription refers to the Open Graph protocol’s description property, og:description. It is a metadata tag used in the head of a web page to provide a concise, human-readable summary of the page’s content for social media previews. When a link is shared on platforms that support Open Graph, og:description helps determine the text shown alongside the page title and image.

The og:description tag is written as a meta element in HTML, typically like: <meta property="og:description" content="A concise summary of the page’s content." />. It is optional, but including it gives site authors more control over how their pages appear in link previews. If it is omitted, social platforms may extract text from other parts of the page, such as the title or body content, which might be less precise or less engaging.

Content guidelines for og:description are similar to writing ad copy for a snippet: describe the page accurately, avoid promotional language, and stay relevant to the page’s actual content. Keep the description concise, as many previews truncate the text after a short length. A practical guideline is to aim for a clear summary within about 100 to 200 characters to maximize readability across devices. It should be kept distinct from, but complementary to, the page’s title and image.

From a technical standpoint, og:description should be placed in the page’s head section and encoded as plain text, without HTML markup, to ensure proper rendering by social platforms. Platforms vary in how they display the description, so testing previews across networks is advisable.