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Guide · Open Graph
Your page changed. The card didn't.
You fixed the title, swapped the image, redeployed — and the share preview still shows the old one. That's the cache. Every platform stores the first scrape and won't look again until you make it. Here's how to force a refresh on each one.
The short answer
Force a re-scrape — editing the page isn't enough.
Each platform caches the first time a URL is scraped and keeps showing that card until the cache expires or you force a refresh. Run the URL through Facebook's Sharing Debugger ("Scrape Again") and LinkedIn's Post Inspector; for X, which has no public validator anymore, append a throwaway query string like ?v=2 or change the og:image filename so it reads as new. Refresh every platform separately — fixing one doesn't touch the others.
Never want to clear a cache again? Every slsh.me short link renders its card from tags you control — change the card and re-share without hunting for a debugger button.
Why it goes stale.
When a link is first shared, the platform's scraper fetches your page once, reads the <meta> tags, downloads the image, and caches the whole card. Showing a fresh card to everyone who sees the post would mean re-fetching your page on every impression — so instead they store it and reuse it for days.
That's great for speed and terrible for edits. When you change og:title or replace og:image, the platform has no idea — nothing tells it to look again. It keeps serving the cached version until the cache naturally expires or you explicitly ask for a re-scrape.
Caches are per-platform and independent. A re-scrape on Facebook does nothing for LinkedIn or X. If you shared the link in several places, you have to refresh each one. And the image has its own cache layer — sometimes the text updates but the old picture lingers because the og:image URL didn't change.
Refresh it, platform by platform.
Work the platforms where the link actually got shared. The first two cover most of the pain.
Facebook — Sharing Debugger
Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug, paste the URL, hit Scrape Again. Facebook re-fetches and updates instantly, and shows you the exact og: tags it read — so you can confirm the new ones are live. This is the canonical fix; it also clears the card for Messenger and Instagram.
LinkedIn — Post Inspector
Open linkedin.com/post-inspector, paste the URL, and LinkedIn re-scrapes on load. There's no separate button — visiting the inspector is the refresh. Do this before you post; LinkedIn caches roughly a week, so a stale card you didn't catch sticks around.
X / Twitter — bust the URL
X retired its public Card Validator, so there's no on-demand re-scrape. Its cache is keyed on the exact URL, so append a harmless query string — ?v=2 — to make X treat it as a new link. Bumping the og:image filename forces just the image to refresh.
Slack & Discord — re-key the unfurl
Both cache unfurls for a while. The reliable trick is the same query-string nudge (?v=2), which makes them fetch fresh. In Slack you can also delete and re-paste the link in a channel to trigger a new unfurl.
When the text updates but the image won't.
The single most common "I re-scraped and it's still wrong" case is a cached image. Platforms cache og:image by its URL — if you replaced og.png in place, the URL didn't change, so the CDN and the platform both keep the old bytes.
Fix it by changing the URL. Ship the new image at a new path (og-v2.png) or add a version query (og.png?v=2) and point og:image at the new URL, then re-scrape. A new URL is a cache key the platform has never seen, so it fetches fresh every time. For the size and format rules that keep the image from dropping entirely, see the Open Graph image size guide.
Confirm the fix without posting.
The risk with cache-busting is posting before you're sure it worked — and now the new URL is cached wrong too. Check the live card first, off to the side, so the version you share is the version you meant.
The free slsh.me Open Graph checker fetches your page live — bypassing every platform cache — and renders the real card on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, Discord, iMessage and WhatsApp, with an audit that flags a missing tag or a too-heavy image. See the truth before any platform caches it.
Check your link preview on the free checkerOr skip the cache fight entirely: every slsh.me link ships one correct card you can update and re-share, free.
Questions
How do I clear Facebook's link preview cache? +
developers.facebook.com/tools/debug), paste your URL, and click Scrape Again. Facebook re-fetches the page and updates its cached card immediately. The debugger also lists exactly which og: tags it read, so you can confirm the new tags are live before you post.How long does a link preview stay cached? +
Why does my link still show the old image after I changed it? +
og:image URL didn't change, so the old bytes stick. Ship the image at a new path or add ?v=2, point og:image at the new URL, then re-scrape.Can I force X (Twitter) to refresh a card without a debugger? +
?v=2 makes X treat it as a fresh link and re-scrape. Changing the og:image filename does the same for the image specifically.Change the card, not the cache.
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