With Facebook we have the Open Graph tags that allow webmasters to specify how the story is displayed on Facebook.
Is there something similar for the Google +1 button, that allows webmasters to specify the thumbnail image, description and title? Google+ seems to be ignoring the og-meta tags.
From Google+ help docs, we now have an official answer.
Google uses schema.org microdata to generate rich snippets in search (and in Google+). There's a lot written about schema.org and how it relates to Facebook OpenGraph in these two links:
See: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1211158 See: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/
Some important bits:
+Snippet
After +1'ing a page, the user is given the option to share the page to Google+ via a displayed Share bubble. This share bubble (along with the resulting Google+ activity post) includes a preview, or +Snippet, that contains the page title, a brief description of the page, and a thumbnail image. These pieces of data are extracted from the target URL's content in one of four ways, listed in order of precedence:
Schema.org microdata (recommended)
If the page is annotated with schema.org microdata, the +Snippet will use the
name,image, anddescriptionproperties found on any schema.org type.
<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<h1 itemprop="name">Shiny Trinket</h1>
<img itemprop="image" src="image-url"></img>
<p itemprop="description">Shiny trinkets are shiny.</p>
</body>
Open Graph protocol
If the page contains Open Graph properties for the title, image, and description, then they will be used for the +Snippet.
<meta property="og:title" content="..."/>
<meta property="og:image" content="..."/>
<meta property="og:description" content="..."/>
Meta "title" and "description" tags
If the page's element contains and tags, the +Snippet will use their content attributes for the title and description, respectively. For the thumbnail image, the sharebox will attempt to find a suitable image on the page.
<meta name="title" content="..." />
<meta name="description" content="..." />
If I share a link to our webapp (restorm.com) in Google+ then the title, description and image are taken from the respective og: tags (og:title, og:description, og:image).
These tags
<title>One Shot Orchestra • Electronic • Music, Concerts & More • restorm.com</title>
<link href="https://restorm.com/favicon.ico?116a158" rel="shortcut icon" />
<meta name="description" content="Listen to music of One Shot Orchestra for free and browse the Artist's news, events, videos, pictures, shop, booking & press Infos, live footage & much more on restorm." />
<meta property="og:title" content="One Shot Orchestra" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://one-shot-orchestra.restorm.com/" />
<meta property="og:type" content="band" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Bangin´ Live Electro aus Bern-Kreuzberg" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="restorm.com" />
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="127577323959237" />
<meta property="og:language" content="en" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://assets3.restorm.com/resources/images/40/40b17a53aa9785fa89c15b06b9fcfd72_643969.jpeg?116a158" />
<meta property="og:video" content="https://one-shot-orchestra.restorm.com/minipage/minipage.swf?applicationSettingsURL=https%3A%2F%2Fone-shot-orchestra.restorm.com%2Fminipage%2Fsettings.xml&auto=true" />
<meta property="og:video:width" content="300" />
<meta property="og:video:height" content="200" />
<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
end up being shared like this
So the title and description are definitely taken from og:title and og:description, and not from the title and description meta tag...
Images that are too small or not square enough will not be included in the +Snippet, even if explicitly referenced using schema.org microdata or Open Graph markup. Specifically, the height must be at least 120px, and if the width is less than 100px, then the aspect ratio must be no greater than 3.0.
Just answered this on another post Google +1 Generated Thumbmail in Profile
Looks Like Google+1 has the following data hierarchy:
Hope this helps.
I am working on this, and Google+ wasn't picking up my OG tags.
When I put: <body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"> into the HTML it started to pick them up.
Hope this saves someone some time!
meta og:image works, secret is to have image large enough. It failed at 140x112 and work when I change to bigger thumbnail 511x364
Google appears to be using the Title and Description of the page, in standard meta tags. It seems to have no way of specifying a thumbnail, however.
{var%20f='http://v.t.sina.com.cn/share/share.php?appkey=1515056452',u=z||d.location,p=['&url=',e(u),'&title=',e(t||d.title),'&source=',e(r),'&sourceUrl=',e(l),'&content=',c||'gb2312','&pic=',e(p||'')].join('');function%20a(){if(!window.open([f,p].join(''),'mb',['toolbar=0,status=0,resizable=1,width=440,height=430,left=',(s.width-440)/2,',top=',(s.height-430)/2].join('')))u.href=[f,p].join('');};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else%20a();})(screen,document,encodeURIComponent,'','','https://i.stack.imgur.com/RGqQp.png', '推荐 我命由我不由天 的文章《Are there tags to specify the Google +1 story form》','https://www.manongdao.com/article-148812.html','页面编码gb2312|utf-8默认gb2312'));){kind=link}