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I have a few questions about elements, and which elements Google uses to display our websites. For instance, does Google use the regular title element to display the titles of our website, or the meta-og:title element to do so? So, when searching our websites, does "Title1" or "Title2" show up?

<title>Title1</title>
<meta property='og:title' content='Title2' />

Another question: Does Google use whatever content that is in our body when displaying the description of our website, or does it use the meta-og:description element for displaying the description of our website? So, does Google display "Description1" or "Description2"?

<body>Description1</body> 
<meta property='og:description' content='Description2' />
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2 Answers 2

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Here Google pick your title in this order.

  1. Google prefer this first <title> Google Strongly use this Webpage Title </title>.
  2. Google can also use your H1 tag, DMOZ directory, and Anchor text(if title tag is absent).

And Google don't use Open Graph Protocol in serp result. Open meta graph tags, help when you share your post in social media, so you can get more click through rate(CTR) by displaying rich content like images, or interesting headings. Yes you can set two different title, one for search result(by using main <title> tag), and one for social media(by using og tags) to get more clicks.

Now, let's come to Meta description, Google may be neglect your meta description as per user query. If query and your meta description is not matched, then Google can pick and highlight any of text from body content.

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In your example,

<meta property='og:title' content='Title2' />

...is created by the CMS (content management system) and is not a known meta-tag as defined by the HTML standards. However, it is defined elsewhere outside of the HTML standards as part of the semantic web. Same with,

<meta property='og:description' content='Description2' />

... which will not exist on all websites, but rather a smaller percentage.

These are known as Open Graph Meta-Tags originally from Facebook and now used my several social media sites. You can read about it here: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/

Google uses the title tag and description meta-tag generally, however, if these tags are not managed well, Google will use content elements of it's choosing. Most of the time, the title IS taken, however, whether the description meta-tag is used or not in the SERP greatly depends upon search query and the description meta-tag.

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  • The "og:" meta properties are "standard" HTML. They are the "open graph" meta tags used by Facebook, Linked-in, and other social sites when users share the content on those sites. @closetnoc is correct that Google does not use them as far as I know.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Dec 29, 2015 at 17:48
  • @StephenOstermiller Not trying to be a snot, but I did a quick look before writing the answer and then went to: w3.org/TR/html5/document-metadata.html#standard-metadata-names today and do not see the meta-tag in the OPs question. I do however, see it as part of RDA but not HTML.
    – closetnoc
    Dec 29, 2015 at 18:32
  • @StephenOstermiller I made a clarification - are you and I on the same track?? Cheers!
    – closetnoc
    Dec 29, 2015 at 18:40
  • It has been documented at ogp.me and standardized between various social networking sites. It is not a W3C standard, and it looks like it will not become one. I only take issue with "not standard" as opposed to "not a W3C standard". Your edit makes that much clearer.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Dec 29, 2015 at 18:41
  • @StephenOstermiller I was aware of the ogp.me site. I checked that the other day. I also did find references to the meta-tags on w3c in other areas but did not explore more than a second or two. ;-) I am behind in studying the standards. Right now, I am trying to take a ball-ping hammer to Hadoop, Solr, and Nutch... like that will work!!
    – closetnoc
    Dec 29, 2015 at 18:50

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