og:url: The Canonical URL Tag for Social Shares

og:url is the canonical URL of your page for social platforms. It tells them: "No matter which link someone shared, this is the address of this page."

<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/blog/launch-week" />

Why og:url exists

People share one page under many addresses: with ?utm_source=newsletter, with ?ref=x, with and without www, with a trailing slash. Without og:url, a platform treats each of these as a different page. Likes, shares, and comments are then split across the variants.

With og:url, the platform groups them under one address.

Rules

• Use an absolute URL with https:// and the domain.
• Use the same value as rel="canonical". Search engines read the canonical link. Social platforms read og:url. They must agree.
• No tracking parameters. No utm_, no session IDs.
• Each page points to itself. See the mistake below.

The mistake that breaks every preview

Facebook does not only store og:url. It goes to that URL and reads the Open Graph tags there. If a template puts the home page URL in og:url on all pages, every share of every page shows the title and the image of the home page.

If your blog posts all show the same preview, check og:url first.

og:url in Next.js

Set metadataBase once. Then give each page its path for the canonical link and for Open Graph.

// app/layout.tsx
export const metadata = {
  metadataBase: new URL('https://example.com'),
}

// app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx
export async function generateMetadata({ params }) {
  const { slug } = await params
  return {
    alternates: { canonical: `/blog/${slug}` },
    openGraph: { url: `/blog/${slug}` },
  }
}

What happens when og:url is missing

The platform uses the address that was shared. The preview still shows. You lose the grouping of URL variants. The protocol lists og:url as required, so add it.

Check your og:url

The Open Graph checker lists the og:url of a page and warns you when it is missing. Related tags: og:title, og:type, og:image, and the full list of Open Graph tags.