Replaced the OG image but social networks show the old one?

You updated og:image, opened Telegram and sent the link to a channel, and the preview is still the old one: the picture from the previous release, the old title, the old description. In the browser everything is new, in the messenger it is old, and it stays that way for hours.

Relax: this is not a bug on your site. Social networks cache the preview the first time a link is shown and then keep serving the saved version for a long time. Below is how to force a cache reset on each network and how to stop the problem from coming back after every image update.

When you first post a link, the network sends a crawler to the page. It reads og:image, og:title and og:description and stores the result. Every next post of the same link is served from the cache, instantly and without visiting your site. For a social network this makes sense: millions of links per second, it cannot download a whole page every time. For you it is inconvenient: hours, sometimes days, pass between “I changed the image” and “the network noticed”.

The key to the solution is knowing what the cache is tied to: the link URL and the image URL. Change at least one and the network treats the link as “new” and rereads the page. Every method below is built on this.

Telegram is the hardest: it has the most persistent cache, and the same link in different chats can show different previews, because there are many servers and their caches differ. The cure is the @WebpageBot bot: send it the link and it asks Telegram to refresh the page cache. After that, delete the old message and send the link again. Just forwarding it once more, without the bot, will not help: the cache belongs to the link, not the message. For more on how Telegram reads meta tags and the right image size, see the Telegram cover guide.

The other networks have official debuggers. They show what the network sees in your meta tags right now and force a reread of the page:

• Facebook*: Sharing Debugger. Paste the URL and click “Scrape Again”. The most predictable tool: after rescraping, Facebook* immediately takes the new meta tags.
• LinkedIn: Post Inspector. It shows how the link looks in the feed and refreshes the cached data when you inspect it.
• X/Twitter: Card Validator. Submitting the URL makes the crawler reread the card. Note that X may ask you to sign in to a developer account.
• VK, Discord and Slack: there is no official reset. VK refreshes the preview on its own over time, Discord caches for a day or longer, Slack’s cache is shorter. The parameter trick from the next section helps here.

If there is no debugger or it did not help, there is a universal move: add a version parameter to the URL, site.com/post?v=2. For the network it is a new link: it rereads the page and picks up the fresh meta tags, while the visitor lands on the same article because the parameter changes nothing. There is only one side effect: analytics may count such links as different pages, which is usually not critical for social posting.

Sometimes the network has reread the page and the preview is still old: that means the old image file is stuck in its CDN cache. In that case add the version not to the link but to the address of the image itself in the meta tag: og-image.png?v=2. The URL is different, so the new file is downloaded.

• 1. Make sure the new image is really served. Open the page source, find og:image, and check the image URL in incognito mode: your site and its CDN cache too.
• 2. Reset the cache with the network’s tool. Telegram: @WebpageBot. Facebook*: Sharing Debugger. LinkedIn: Post Inspector. X: Card Validator.
• 3. Did not help? Publish the link with a parameter (?v=2) or with a version in the image address itself.
• 4. Check the preview before publishing. Send the link to your Saved Messages first and see what the messenger shows.

The fourth step saves the most nerves: a preview that satisfies you in a private chat will go to the channel just the same.

The emergency parameter trick is worth turning into a system: version og:image from day one. When you change the picture, change its address too: og-image-2.png or ?v=2. Then the cache question disappears: the address is new every time and the networks download the fresh file themselves.

And make the picture right the first time: 1200×630, large readable text, good contrast. A good preview does not need constant edits, so the cache will not get in the way. Details on the right dimensions are in the OG image size guide. If a link shows no preview at all, see why a link has no preview.

In OG Studio you can build a 1200×630 OG image in 30 seconds: enter a topic, get headline options from AI, pick a template and export the PNG. Before publishing, run the link through @WebpageBot or the network’s debugger and you will see exactly what your followers will see.