How to fix missing og description on WooCommerce

Steps for WooCommerce

1. Install the free Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugin if not already active (Plugins → Add New → search and install).
2. For Yoast SEO: edit any product, page, or post → scroll to the 'Yoast SEO' meta box → click the 'Social' tab → enter your og:description in the 'Facebook description' field, or leave it blank to inherit from the SEO meta description field on the 'SEO' tab.
3. For Rank Math: edit the item → open the Rank Math meta box → go to the 'Social' tab → fill in 'Facebook Description'.
4. To set a site-wide fallback in Yoast: Yoast SEO → Social → Facebook → enable Open Graph → save. Yoast will then fall back to the meta description for og:description when no explicit value is set.
5. For programmatic control in your theme, add to functions.php or a custom plugin (only if not using an SEO plugin): add_action('wp_head', function(){ if(is_product()){ global $post; echo '<meta property="og:description" content="' . esc_attr(get_the_excerpt()) . '">'; } });
6. Validate with Facebook Sharing Debugger.

<meta property="og:description" content="Handcrafted leather wallets built to last — shop bifolds, cardholders, and money clips with free shipping over $50." />

What is missing og description?

The og:description tag is a small piece of HTML that tells social networks — Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, iMessage, and many others — what text to show beneath your page title when someone shares a link. It is part of the Open Graph protocol, a standard originally created by Facebook and now used across virtually every social and messaging platform. Without it, those platforms either scrape random text from the page or show nothing at all, resulting in unappealing, confusing link previews. Think of it as writing the caption for your own story before someone else writes it for you.

When customers share a product or category page on social media without an og:description, the preview looks bare or shows irrelevant boilerplate text — which dramatically reduces the chance someone clicks through. Studies consistently show that rich, well-written link previews generate far more clicks than bare URLs, directly affecting referral traffic and sales. For ecommerce stores, social sharing is a meaningful free-traffic channel, and Pinterest and Facebook in particular use the Open Graph tags to populate shoppable pins and ads; missing tags can break or degrade those integrations. While og:description is not a direct Google ranking signal, higher click-through rates from social traffic indirectly reinforce your site's authority and revenue.

See the complete Missing og description guide for every platform and the full background.