How to use it
- Type the Page title and the Description of the page.
- Type the full Canonical address of the page, starting with https://.
- Choose the Search engine index and Links on the page options, and type the Language.
- For link cards, fill in the Open Graph and Twitter fields. Copy the Head tags into the head element of the page, and add the language to the html element as the instruction says.
What each tag does
Each line gives the search engine or a link preview one piece of information about the page. Most pages need only the core tags; the others are optional.
- Title: the title element of the page. Google's title guidance names it as one source of title links.
- Description: a meta tag named description. Google may use it as the snippet, or it may choose other text from the page.
- Canonical address: a link element with rel canonical, in the head. Google recommends absolute addresses over relative ones, so the tool asks for a full address.
- Robots: a meta tag named robots. Google lists noindex and nofollow as rules and calls all the default, with no restrictions. Several rules can be combined in one comma-separated value.
- Viewport: lets a phone browser use the device width. The tool writes width=device-width with an initial scale of 1.
- Open Graph (og:) and Twitter (twitter:) tags carry the title, description, address and picture that link previews use. og:type says whether the page is a website or an article; og:url is the canonical address of the object.
Escaping, and what is left out
Every value is escaped before it is written: & becomes &, < becomes <, > becomes >, a double quote becomes " and an apostrophe becomes '. The browser still shows the original characters, so the page reads the same as you typed it.
- An optional field that is left empty writes no tag.
- Line breaks in the description become single spaces.
Why the language is an instruction
The lang attribute is not a head tag. It belongs on the opening html element, so the tool writes it as an instruction. The value must be a single language tag such as en or tr-TR.
Length guides
Google documents no fixed length for a title or a description, so the notes about 60 and 160 characters are rough guides, not limits. They help you spot a title or description that may be cut short in results.
Worked example: a calculator page in English
The title is Compound Interest Calculator with Monthly Deposits (50 characters). The description is 134 characters long. The canonical address is https://example.com/compound-interest-calculator and the language is en.
With the robots options index and follow, the viewport tag on, the theme colour #0f766e and the author Example Editorial Team, the tool writes 18 head tags. Title and description are both within the guides, so no note appears.
| Head tags | Value |
|---|---|
| Tags written | 18 |
| robots | index, follow |
| Canonical address | https://example.com/compound-interest-calculator |
| Notes | None |
Frequently asked questions
Do I really need all of these tags?
No. The title, the description and the canonical address are the core. The Open Graph and Twitter tags matter when a page is shared as a link card, and you can leave out the rest.
Why are my quotes and ampersands changed into codes?
They are escaped so that the value stays as text inside the attribute and cannot end it early. In a browser the page shows the original characters again, so your title is unchanged.
Does the robots tag stop a page from appearing in search?
The noindex rule asks search engines not to show the page in results. Google's robots meta tag page describes it this way, and it says all is the default with no restrictions.
Why does the tool note a title longer than 60 characters?
Google documents no fixed length for titles and truncates them to fit the device width, so 60 characters is only a rough guide. A long title may be cut in results.
Is the language tag enough to translate a page?
No. The lang attribute states which language a page is written in. It does not translate the page, which still needs its own text in that language.
Sources
- Google Search Central: robots meta tag
- Google Search Central: consolidate duplicate URLs (rel canonical)
- Google Search Central: title links
- The Open Graph protocol
- MDN: the viewport meta tag
- MDN: the lang global attribute
- Facebook for Developers: images for sharing (recommended size)
Figures and text last checked on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.