What meta tags actually do
Three categories of meta tags control how your page appears across the web. (1) SEO tags — `<title>` and `<meta description>` decide your Google search appearance. (2) Open Graph (og:*) tags control Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, and most chat-app previews. (3) Twitter Card tags (twitter:*) control X previews specifically.
Without meta tags, platforms guess — usually pulling random text from your page and the first image they find. The result looks broken. With proper meta tags, you control the entire preview.
