Meta tag checker

What this meta tag checker reads

Enter any public URL and our server downloads the page the way a desktop browser would, follows its redirects and reads the <head> of the HTML. You get every tag that changes how the page appears in search results and when someone shares it, with a short explanation next to anything that needs fixing. It also fetches the share image to check its real size and weight, which are the usual reasons a preview shows up blank or tiny.

The checker reads the HTML as the server sends it, before any JavaScript runs. Google renders JavaScript and may see tags that a script adds later, but Facebook, LinkedIn, X and WhatsApp generally read only the raw HTML. If your tags are missing here but you can see them in the browser's inspector, a script is adding them, and links to the page will not share well.

Title tags

The <title> is the single most visible tag: it is usually the blue link in Google and the name of the browser tab. Write one per page, unique, describing what the page offers, with the most important words first and the brand at the end if there is room.

Google sets no character limit. Its documentation says the title link is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width, and that it builds the title link from several sources: the <title> element, the main visible heading, <h1>, og:title, anchor text and more. That is why Google sometimes shows a different title from yours, most often when the title is very long, stuffed with keywords, or the same across many pages. In practice, around 50 to 60 characters usually fits on desktop. This tool measures the width of your title in the same font size Google uses on desktop and shows where it would likely be cut.

Meta descriptions

The meta description is a summary of the page that Google may use as the snippet under your title. Google is clear that there is no length limit, that snippets are cut as needed to fit the device, and that it builds the snippet mostly from the page content, using the meta description when it describes the page better than the on-page text. A good description still matters, because when Google uses it, it is your pitch in the results.

Aim for one or two sentences, roughly 120 to 160 characters, that say what the page offers and why it is worth the click. Give every important page its own description; identical descriptions across a site are a common reason Google ignores them.

Canonical, robots and hreflang

• Canonical (<link rel="canonical">) names the preferred URL when the same content is reachable at several addresses, for example with tracking parameters. Most pages should point to themselves. Google treats it as a strong hint, not an order. A canonical pointing to another page asks Google to index that page instead of this one.
• Robots meta (<meta name="robots">) and the X-Robots-Tag header control indexing. noindex keeps the page out of search results; it is the most expensive tag to leave on by accident, for example after a redesign launched from a staging site.
• Hreflang links the language and country versions of a page to each other, so Google shows each searcher the right one. Every version should list all the others and itself, and an x-default entry covers everyone else.
• Viewport and lang: the viewport tag makes the page usable on phones, and the lang attribute tells browsers and screen readers which language the page is in.

Google ignores the meta keywords tag for ranking, so this tool does not check it.

Open Graph and Twitter cards

When someone shares a link, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and most chat apps read the Open Graph tags: og:title, og:description, og:image and og:url. X reads its own twitter: tags first and falls back to Open Graph for most of them. Without these tags each network guesses, often picking a logo, a cookie banner or no image at all.

For the share image, 1200 x 630 pixels (a 1.91:1 ratio) is the common choice that works well across Facebook, LinkedIn and X. Keep important text away from the edges, because some apps crop to a square. Keep the file light, too: WhatsApp in particular often skips large images. Use an absolute URL, starting with https://, because relative paths are not resolved by every platform.

Social networks cache previews. After you fix the tags, ask them to read the page again with Facebook's Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn's Post Inspector; otherwise the old preview can stay for days.

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