What’s Open Graph Protocol?

Mike Siers - May 11, 2011

Open Graph Protocol is something many people  have never heard of before. If that includes you, no worries – just keep reading. By the end of this blog post, you will know more about it (and how it can help your website) than most majority of people out there. If you are a person who likes to empower the circle of colleagues, please share this information with them.

So, Open Graph Protocol. What is it…?

In short, it is a set of meta tags that you insert into the coding of your website that will enable you to further integrate your website into the social network stratosphere.

Open Graph Protocol on Facebook allows you to tag things, such as “Like” buttons. By coding action items, such as “Like” buttons, you will have the ability to integrate your website into the Facebook platform, whereby users will be able to find links to your website through friends of theirs who have visited and performed an action on your site. 

Let me further explain because it gets really cool at this point:

Let’s say you added a Facebook “Like” button on your web-page (tagged it with Open Graph Protocol) and a visitor to your site decided to click it. Because you tagged the “Like” button, your website will integrate into the Facebook network and create a connection between your website and the visitor. That created connection with your visitor/Facebook user means your page will now show up in the “Likes & Interests” area of that user’s Facebook profile.

Optimizing the social action calls of your site with Open Graph Protocol tags can be quite powerful, and here are two reason’s why: 

1. It is obviously a social world out there on the web, so having Like buttons will go a long way until, of course, we see more traction with Google’s upcoming +1 Button.
2. Taking the extra step toward coding these button on your website with Open Graph Protocol will enable all your website to have more of a social presence.

Yes, Open Graph Protocol tags can go a long way toward helping your website in Facebook and around the internet. By using Open Graph Protocol your website will show up in same places that Facebook pages do (e.g. search).