HOW TO: Optimize the OG:Description Tag for Search and Social

The first question that comes up about the OG:Description tag is “What is OG:?” In this case it does not mean Original Gangster. OG stands for Open Graph which is a tagging protocol (OGP) that is quickly spreading and being adopted across the web as a new standard (you can learn all about OGP at the Open Graph Protocol site).

The second question is “What’s the max character limit of the OG:Description tag”? Short answer, there is none. Long answer 160-300. The actual OG:Description tag has no character limit. It’s a meta tag so there’s virtually no limit on how many characters you can include. What a site will display is a completely different scenario.

Every site has a character limitation to what it will display on links and content shares. so do many of the sharing services out there and that’s where we get the 160-300 number. Knowing this, the question is no longer about max size, but how to optimize your OG:Description tags for your audience.

The Facebook Description Limit is 300

Facebook OG:Description Tag Display Limit

Right now Facebook only displays the first 300 characters of a description so if your primary audience is on Facebook write your OG:Description tag accordingly. 300 characters is more than double the length of a tweet (2.14x to be exact) so you have plenty of room for product descriptions, keywords, and even a CTA.

The LinkedIn Description Limit is 225

LinkedIn OG:Description Tag Display Limit

Yes, LinkedIn also pulls from OG tags and the display limit is 225 characters. In this case if your primary audience hangs out and shares info on LinkedIn you don’t want to write your OG:Description tags to be any longer than 225 characters or else it will be truncated.

Another point of interest with LinkedIn is that it doesn’t seem to pull in special characters like Facebook, Google and other do. In the example the title has a ? instead of a TM after Party Animal so if you’re audience is on LinkedIn avoid special characters in your OG:Title tag.

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