og:description is missing
Without og:description, platforms either fall back to your meta description or leave the card body empty. Here is what each one does and what to write.
What you are seeing: Your preview card shows a headline and an image but no supporting sentence underneath — or shows a sentence pulled from somewhere unexpected on the page.
The fallback is inconsistent
Some platforms fall back to the standard meta description. Some scrape the first paragraph of visible text. Some leave the body blank and render a shorter card. Which one you get depends on where the link is shared, so the same URL can look considerably different in Slack and on LinkedIn.
When a platform does scrape body text, it takes whatever comes first in the DOM. On a page with a cookie banner, a nav, or a promo bar above the content, that is what ends up in your card.
What to write
One sentence that earns the click. The headline states what the page is; the description gives the reason to open it. Concrete detail beats a summary — a number, a name, or a specific outcome does more work than a restatement of the title.
Keep it to about 125 characters. That is where mobile cards start truncating, and mobile is where most link previews are actually seen.
It is not the same as your meta description
A meta description is written for a search results page, where the reader has already typed a query and is scanning for a match. An og:description is read by someone who was not looking for you at all. The first can be descriptive; the second has to be interesting.
Setting both is worth the extra line. They are cheap, and they are read in genuinely different contexts.
Frequently asked
Can og:description be the same as my meta description?
It can, and that is much better than leaving it unset. But the two are read in different contexts — search intent versus a feed — so writing them separately usually pays off on pages that get shared often.
How long should og:description be?
Around 125 characters. Desktop cards show more, but mobile truncates near that point and mobile is the common case. Anything beyond about 200 characters will be cut everywhere.
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