facebook-opengraph

List of global Open Graph types

I am building a website for a conference, with OpenG raph attributes for Facebook and Twitter sharing.

The validator says that the og:type field is mandatory:

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So, I added a field:

<meta property="og:type" content="..." />

but I am not sure what my content type is. The manual states that:

In order for your object to be represented within the graph, you need to specify its type. This is done using the og:type property:

<meta property="og:type" content="website" />

When the community agrees on the schema for a type, it is added to the list of global types.

However, I could not find a list of "global types", and I am not sure what the type of my conference webpage is.

Where can I find a list of global object types for open graph objects?

Solution

  • Here’s the website of Open Graph Protocol: http://ogp.me/. Where ogp stands for Open Graph Protocol.

    Explanation

    On this website you can see all the OGP objects and it’s possible object types provided with an explanation of their purpose.

    The list

    On this website they are also talking about a global list of object types. And when a global object type is accepted by the community it is added to The Global List. What this suggests is that there is in fact a (apparently virtual) list of global object types! But the fact is you can create one yourself as well!

    Here’s Facebook’s global list of object types: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/opengraph/.

    Also Schema (https://schema.org/) has a list of commonly used types. I would really recommend using Schema, since it’s used by Google to see how well you have documented your website (hence the name "Structured data"). Google also pulls out given tables, search bar, the website’s page structure, ratings/reviews, products and prizes and much more.

    Example

    Let's take a look at a random movie on the old imdb.com: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)". We see the tag used here:

    <meta property='og:type' content="video.movie" />

    Now if you would search the title online (let's use Google), we see the cast, duration, covers, genre, release year, box office. It's all collected by Google.

    Nowadays, imdb uses image as their og:type. I'm sure why... maybe they want Google to fetch their data differently, or Google doesn't use the video.movie type anymore (I'll have to do some digging).

    Another example. Let's search a random product on Etsy.com and throw it in the Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. We see that Google knows this is a product! Because they have the meta tag:

    <meta property="og:type" content="product" />

    Now this product will most likely be visible in Google Shopping as well!

    Conclusion

    I think you need to ask yourself why you would need this meta tag and it’s properties. I always put it in, but it always says website.

    It’s cool you can create this list of global object types yourself, or use the types provided by your target (Facebook in your example). But is it really worth all this trouble? I created many websites without it and they preview their links beautifully on WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook! Goodluck.

    Read this answer for even more information about meta tags!