## How it works

Optimizely Content Recommendations uses metadata for the following two main purposes:

• Within _flows_ as a way to categorize content, based on common metadata attributes. See [Setting up sections and flows](🔗).

• Within _rendering_ to specify what elements to display for each content item recommended.

Optimizely recommends the following metadata fields and will support the majority of content recommendation use cases:

• **Title** – Title should appear under the meta property **og:title** in the follow format.



• **Description** – Description should appear under the meta property **og:description** in the following format.



• **Image** – Image should appear under the meta property **og:image** in the following format.



• **Published date** – Published date should appear under the meta property **article:published\_time** in the exact format below.



• **Article category** – Article category should appear under the meta property **article:category** in the following format.



Additional metadata fields are also supported using the custom namespace (**idio:**) to pass information. For example:



If you have multiple values for a metadata item, Content recommendations collects them all. For example: