A homepage Open Graph audit should check four things: whether the required tags exist in the document head, whether their values accurately describe the homepage, whether the image URL points to the intended image, and whether the canonical homepage URL is correct. The Open Graph Protocol defines the required basics, but the available evidence does not establish which defects appeared across 62 homepages or how often; no site-by-site findings or counts are claimed here.
Which Open Graph tags should a homepage have?
The Open Graph Protocol specifies four basic required properties: og:title, og:type, og:image, and og:url. They belong in the HTML document head as meta tags. These values help describe the page when it is represented as an object in a social graph.
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A minimal example looks like this:
<head>
<meta property="og:title" content="Example Site">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/homepage-share.jpg">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/">
</head>This is a structural example, not a recommended title or image for every site. Choose values that describe the actual homepage. The protocol also notes that additional properties may be required depending on the selected og:type; check its documentation for the type you use.
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og:title: Does it identify the homepage?
Check that the value is a meaningful title for the homepage, rather than a blank value, a generic default, or text that belongs to a different page. Compare it with the title you intend a visitor to see when the homepage is shared.
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og:type: Does the declared type fit?
Confirm that the type describes the object represented by the homepage. The choice matters because the protocol can require additional properties for particular types. Do not assume that a tag set copied from another kind of page is complete for your homepage.
og:image: Does the URL identify the intended representative image?
Inspect the actual URL in the tag and confirm it points to the image you want associated with the homepage. A tag can be present yet still be wrong if it names an unrelated asset or an outdated image. The protocol defines this property as the image URL intended to represent the object.
og:url: Is this the intended canonical homepage URL?
The protocol defines og:url as the canonical URL used as the object’s permanent ID in the graph. Check that it identifies the intended homepage URL, not an unrelated page or an unintended variant. The value should agree with the canonical identity you mean to give the homepage.
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How to audit the homepage
- Inspect the delivered HTML. Open the homepage and view its page source or use your browser’s developer tools to inspect the document. Find the four
og:properties and verify they appear in the document head, as the protocol specifies. - Record presence and value separately. For each property, note whether it exists and whether its value is accurate. Presence alone does not establish that a tag describes the homepage correctly.
- Check the image and URL destinations. Review the image URL as well as the text of the tag, and compare
og:urlwith the canonical homepage identity you intend. Do not treat a populated field as proof that its destination or meaning is right. - Validate the markup. Look for malformed or inconsistent metadata in the head. Google Search Central says the HTML head is the primary location for page metadata and warns that invalid or inconsistent markup can cause problems with how metadata is used in Google Search. That guidance concerns Google Search; it does not by itself establish how every social platform will process a page.
- Compare a debugger’s reading with the source. The Open Graph Protocol page links to Facebook’s Object Debugger. Use a debugger to check whether the metadata it reports matches what you see in the page source, and consult the tool’s current interface for its specific behavior.
Why can a shared link show the wrong title or image?
Start by distinguishing a missing tag from an inaccurate one. The required property may be absent, or it may be present with a value that points to the wrong title, type, image, or canonical URL. The markup can also be in the wrong part of the document or invalid or inconsistent. Compare the raw page source with what a debugger reports to locate where the mismatch appears.
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Do not infer a platform-wide cause from that comparison alone. The sources cited here establish the protocol’s basic properties and Google’s metadata guidance, but do not document every social platform’s crawler, caching, or refresh behavior. A debugger result should be treated as a check of that tool’s current reading, not proof of how every service will display a shared link.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the 62-homepage premise does—and does not—establish
The title’s sample size is not accompanied here by site-level observations, defect counts, or a counting method. It therefore cannot support a claim about which errors were found, how common they were, or what proportion of the sample had a particular problem. The checklist above describes what to inspect; it is not a report of measured failures.
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