Free SEO tool
Meta Tag Checker
See the head tags of one page as a browser receives them: title, meta description, canonical, robots rules, Open Graph and Twitter cards. A preview shows how the page may look in search results and when someone shares the link.
Free. Checks the address you enter in about 20 seconds.
What this tool checks
Title and description, with counts
The text of the title element and the meta description, each with its character count, so you can see at once which is missing, empty or long.
Canonical URL
The rel=canonical address and whether it points to the page itself, another page on your site or another site.
Robots rules from both places
The meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. A noindex in either keeps the page out of Google, and the header is easy to miss because it never appears in the HTML.
Viewport and language
The viewport meta tag and the lang attribute on the html element.
Open Graph and Twitter cards
og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type and og:url, plus the twitter: tags that set the card type and its content.
hreflang alternates
The language and region versions the page lists with rel=alternate hreflang, when it has any.
Search and share previews
An approximation of how the title and description may appear in search results and how the link may look when shared.
What it can’t check
- Predict the exact title and snippet Google will show. Google can rewrite titles and choose snippet text from the page depending on the search.
- Show how each social network will render the link. Each uses its own layout and caches previews, so a fixed tag can take time to show.
- Compare tags across pages. It reads only the address you enter; the Website SEO Checker looks for duplicate titles across key pages.
- Confirm that the other language versions in hreflang link back to this page.
- Judge whether the title and description are well written or match what the page offers.
Why it matters
Head tags are the instructions and summaries machines read before a person sees anything. The title usually becomes the headline of your search result and the name of the browser tab, and the meta description is often used as the snippet below it. One wrong robots value or canonical can quietly take a page out of search, and nothing on the page itself gives it away.
Share previews work the same way. When someone posts your link in a chat app or on social media, the card is built from og:title, og:description and og:image. Without them, the network guesses, and the result is often the wrong image, an odd excerpt or no picture at all.
How to read the results
- Title and character count
- Long titles aren’t errors, but Google shortens title links to fit the screen. Past about 60 characters the end may be cut, so put the words that matter first.
- Meta description and character count
- Past about 160 characters the snippet will probably be shortened. With no description, Google builds a snippet from the page text.
- Canonical: this page
- The page names its own address as the preferred one. This is the usual, correct setup.
- Canonical: another page
- The page asks search engines to index a different address instead. Right for duplicates such as filtered or tracking-parameter URLs; wrong if this page should appear in search itself.
- Canonical: another site
- The preferred version is on another domain. Only intended when you republish content that lives elsewhere.
- Meta robots and X-Robots-Tag
- noindex keeps the page out of results and nofollow asks crawlers not to follow its links. No value means the defaults: index and follow.
- Viewport and lang
- The viewport should be width=device-width, initial-scale=1. lang should match the page’s language, such as en or en-GB.
- Open Graph and Twitter tags
- A missing og:image is the most visible gap, because shared links then appear without a picture. og:url should match the canonical address.
- hreflang
- Each alternate should be a full URL, and the set should include this page itself. Add an x-default entry for visitors whose language you don’t serve.
How to fix the most common problems
The title shown isn’t the one you wrote
If the title here differs from what you typed in your CMS, a theme template, an SEO plugin or an app is overriding it. Search the theme for the title element and remove the duplicate source, so one setting controls the title.
No image when the link is shared
Add og:image with an absolute https URL to a large landscape image (1200 × 630 pixels is a common size), plus og:title and og:description. In Shopify, set a social sharing image under Online Store › Preferences; in WordPress, most SEO plugins have a social tab per page.
noindex in the X-Robots-Tag header
A header comes from your server, CDN or host, not from the page. Look for X-Robots-Tag in .htaccess, your Nginx or CDN rules, or a staging option in your hosting panel, and remove it from pages that should be indexed.
A canonical that points to the wrong address
Common causes are a template that prints a fixed URL, or a mix of http and https or www and non-www. Use the page’s own absolute https address in the exact form you want indexed.
An old preview after you fixed the tags
Networks cache link previews. Ask the network to fetch the page again with its own tool, such as Facebook’s Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn’s Post Inspector, or wait for the cache to expire.
Questions about this tool
Why does Google show a different title from my title tag?
Google builds title links from several sources, including the title element, the main heading, og:title and link text pointing to the page. It may use another source when the title is very long, repeated across pages or doesn’t match the content.
How long should a meta description be?
Google sets no limit and shortens snippets to fit the device. We flag descriptions over 160 characters as likely to be cut; whatever the length, put the key message first.
What is the difference between meta robots and X-Robots-Tag?
They accept the same rules. The meta tag sits in the page’s HTML, while X-Robots-Tag is an HTTP header that also works for PDFs and images. If the two conflict, Google applies the more restrictive rule.
Do Open Graph tags help rankings?
Google doesn’t describe Open Graph as a ranking signal; the tags control how links look when shared. Google may use og:title as one of the sources for a title link.
Does the checker see tags added by JavaScript?
Yes, it reads the page in a browser after scripts run. Many link-preview crawlers read only the HTML the server sends, so keep Open Graph tags in the server-rendered HTML to be safe.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Meta tags and attributes that Google supports(opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Influencing title links(opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Control your snippets(opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag(opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Localized versions of your pages (hreflang)(opens in a new tab)
- The Open Graph protocol(opens in a new tab)
Related tools
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- SEORobots.txt CheckerRead your robots.txt like a crawler: which bots are blocked, whether the page you enter can be crawled, and which sitemaps it lists.Open the tool
- SEOXML Sitemap CheckerFind and validate your XML sitemap: format, URL count, lastmod dates, other hosts and whether a sample of its URLs work.Open the tool
Need the fixes, not just the findings?
The SEO Fix Report ($69, one-time) starts from the full free scan and adds more pages, the change to make for every finding, a PDF and re-tests to verify your fixes.