Why does the tool not treat og:description as required? Can I leave it empty?
Because the Open Graph protocol requires only four properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. The description is optional, so when you leave it empty the builder simply omits the line and shows no warning. You can leave it out, but a short sentence helps people decide whether to tap the link, if the platform chooses to show it.
What the builder does with an empty description
We entered a title, a full URL, an image and alt text, and left the description blank. The tags appeared with no warning, and neither og:description nor twitter:description was in them. That is different from the title, image or URL: leaving any of those out brings a warning that the property is required by the protocol.
Notice too that og:type can never be missing, because the tool always writes it from the menu. So in practice the required properties it can warn you about are three: the title, the image and the URL.
What a card looks like without one
In the tool's illustrative preview, the description line disappears and the domain, title and image remain. Real apps differ: some show only the title anyway, and some may take other text from the page. That is each platform's call, and we cannot tell you what every one will show. Try a share yourself, or use the platform's official inspection tool where one exists.
What to write if you add one
- One or two sentences that add to the title rather than repeat it. If the title is the product name, the description says what matters to a buyer: sizes, delivery, what makes it different.
- Put the most important point first, since platforms may show only part of it.
- No formatting needed. The tool collapses line breaks and repeated spaces into single spaces.
An example of that clean-up: we typed a description with extra spaces and a line break in the middle, and it came out as one tidy string, written into both og:description and twitter:description:
<meta property="og:description" content="Oud oil in three sizes">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Oud oil in three sizes">
Steps
- Write the description in the Open Graph metadata builder, or leave it empty if you have nothing to add to the title.
- To see its length in words and characters, paste it into the Word and character counter.
- Check the preview, then copy the tags.
The builder caps the description at 2,000 characters; anything longer shows an error and stops the output. A long description rarely helps anyway, because a card is a small space and platforms decide how much of it to show.
Common questions
Is this the same as the meta description in search results?
They are different tags. The builder writes the share tag only.
Can the description be Arabic while the title is English?
Technically yes, but a card reads better in the language of the page itself.
Why was there no warning when I left it empty?
Because it is optional in the protocol. Warnings are for required properties and for values likely to cause a problem.