OG Image Not Updating? How to Clear the Social Preview Cache

You updated the og:image tag on your page. The OG checker confirms the new tag is correct. But when you share the link, every platform still shows the old image. You did not break anything — you are dealing with platform caching.

Every major social platform caches link preview data when a URL is first shared. They do not automatically re-check pages after that. To show the updated preview, you need to force each platform to re-fetch your page.

Here is exactly how to do that on every major platform.

Why Social Platforms Cache OG Data

When someone shares a URL on a social platform, the platform fetches your page to extract the og:title, og:description, and og:image. Then it stores that data in its own cache. Every future share of that URL uses the cached data instead of fetching the page again.

This caching is intentional. Fetching every page on every share would be extremely slow and expensive at the scale these platforms operate. The tradeoff is that your page updates are not reflected immediately in new shares.

How long does the cache last?

Cache duration varies by platform and usage:

• Facebook: 24-30 hours for active URLs; longer for rarely shared URLs
• LinkedIn: variable; sometimes updates within hours, sometimes takes longer
• Twitter: typically a few hours to 24 hours
• Discord: cache varies; Discord re-fetches pages relatively quickly compared to Facebook
• Slack: usually refreshes within a few hours of an update

For any platform where you need the updated preview immediately, use the debug tools below to force an early refresh.

First: Confirm Your Tags Are Actually Updated

Before forcing a platform re-scrape, confirm that the updated og:image is actually live on your page. Use the HTML paste method in the OG checker:

1. Open your live page in a browser
2. Press Ctrl+U (or Cmd+U) to view source
3. Copy all the HTML
4. Paste into the OG checker
5. Click Check Tags

Look at the og:image value the checker finds. If it shows the old image URL, the problem is that your page itself has not updated yet — not a cache issue. Check your CMS, CDN, or server cache to confirm the page is serving the new HTML.

If the checker shows the new, correct og:image tag, your page is serving the right data. The problem is platform-side caching. Proceed with the force-refresh steps below.

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Clearing the Facebook OG Cache

Facebook has an official tool for forcing a preview refresh: the Sharing Debugger.

1. Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
2. Enter your page URL in the input field
3. Click Debug
4. Scroll to the top of the results and click Scrape Again

After clicking Scrape Again, Facebook immediately fetches a fresh copy of your page and updates its cached preview data. The debug results update to show what Facebook found in the new scrape. You can click "Share Preview" to see how the updated post will look in the news feed.

If "Scrape Again" is not working

If Facebook's scraper reports errors (could not fetch image, timeout, etc.), the issue may be with your server or CDN still serving old data. Check that your CDN or server-side cache has been cleared and your page is definitely serving the updated HTML. You may need to purge your CDN cache before scraping again.

For Cloudflare users: go to Cloudflare Dashboard > Caching > Configuration > Purge Cache, and purge by URL for the specific page you updated.

Clearing LinkedIn, Twitter, and Other Platform Caches

Each platform has its own tool for forcing a preview refresh.

LinkedIn — Post Inspector

1. Go to linkedin.com/post-inspector
2. Enter your URL
3. Click Inspect

LinkedIn's Post Inspector shows what its crawler found and refreshes the cached data. The update may take a few minutes to propagate across LinkedIn's preview rendering. Try sharing the link again after a few minutes to confirm the update appeared.

Twitter / X — Cards Validator

1. Go to cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
2. Enter your URL
3. Click Preview Card

Twitter fetches a fresh copy of the page and shows the resulting card. This also updates Twitter's cache for that URL. After running the validator, new shares of the URL on Twitter will use the updated preview.

Discord

Discord does not have a public cache-clearing tool. Discord's cache typically expires within a few hours. If you need the update to appear immediately, you can share a slightly modified URL version (add ?v=2 or similar) to force Discord to treat it as a new URL and fetch fresh preview data.

Slack

Slack also lacks a public cache tool. Slack refreshes link unfurls relatively quickly — usually within a few hours. For immediate updates, the modified URL approach (appending a query parameter) forces a fresh fetch.

The Query String Trick for Immediate Cache Bypass

If you need the updated preview to appear immediately on any platform — including platforms without a manual refresh tool — append a query string to the URL you are sharing.

For example, instead of sharing:

https://yourdomain.com/page/

Share this version:

https://yourdomain.com/page/?v=2

Social platforms treat query strings as part of the URL, so they see this as a different URL from the one they cached. They fetch fresh preview data for the new URL.

Considerations with this approach

• The query string version is now a separate URL for platform tracking purposes. Analytics may record it as a separate page unless you handle query string canonicalization.
• Make sure your server does not return a 404 or redirect for URLs with this query string. Most servers pass query strings through to the same page without issues.
• If your og:url tag specifies the canonical URL without the query string, platforms like Facebook may de-duplicate it to the original URL in their systems. Test this before relying on it in production.

Frequently Asked Questions

I cleared the Facebook cache using Sharing Debugger but the old image still appears on existing posts. Why?

The Sharing Debugger refreshes Facebook's cache for new shares of that URL. Existing posts that already have the preview embedded do not automatically update — Facebook stores the preview data with the post at the time of creation. Only new shares will show the updated preview. Old posts retain whatever preview was cached when they were published.

How do I clear the OG cache for my entire site, not just one page?

There is no bulk cache-clearing tool for social platform preview caches. You need to force a refresh individually for each URL where the cached preview is wrong. Facebook's Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn's Post Inspector, and Twitter's Cards Validator each handle one URL per request. Prioritize the pages that are actively being shared.

My CDN is Cloudflare. Do I need to clear the CDN cache too before platform re-scraping?

Yes, if Cloudflare is caching your HTML pages. If the CDN is serving cached HTML that still has the old og:image, the platform scraper will fetch the old version even if your origin server has the updated file. Purge the specific page URL in Cloudflare's cache before using Facebook's Sharing Debugger or any other platform tool to force a re-scrape.