Have you updated a featured image or graphic on a web page, blog post or home page of a website only to find that when you share the link to Facebook, it still shows the old image? Like most social media platforms, Facebook caches a lot of the content, especially the featured image which is the primary image that shows up on a link share. If you ever change that image, say during the initial editing / publishing process (it happens to us often as we update a lot of website) then you’ll want to make sure that the most current image is properly. This article shows you how to clear / update Facebook’s link cache.
Before / After Featured Images
The following screenshots show a real life before/after example of the featured images on Facebook. This was from one of our portfolio websites for Argonaut Manufacturing.
Debugging Steps
First step is to make sure that the post and/or website has been assigned a featured image. Depending on the platform you use (WordPress, Wix, Square Space, etc.) the area to add a featured image will differ. Once this is complete, you’ll want to copy the link of the post and take it over to get “de-bugged”!
Facebook has a special website that will scrape and debug your link to make sure it has the most recent and updated featured image: Facebook Debugger.
- Go to Facebook’s Debugger Webpage.
- Paste link into space and click “debug”
- See the new image and information pop up!*
* If the image does not pop up immediately, click on “scrape again” until the updated image comes up. Once this is complete, you are ready to go with your link share on Facebook. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 scrapes to get it all updated.
The cool part about this debugging website is that it will let you know the last time that the link was scraped. So if was last scraped more than a year ago, you definitely want to make sure to scrape again just to make sure all of the updated content is picked up as well.
Here’s another before and after cache.
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Except this doesn’t do anything to clear the image cache, which you explicitly claimed to be talking about.
When Facebook hits an og:image URL, it caches it.
If you’ve changed the image at that URL, Facebook won’t know, because every time it sees requests for that image URL, it serves it from the cache, rather than returning to the server.
No matter how many times you click “Scrape again”, it’ll only tell Facebook to recheck the link for new og tags. It won’t do anything about Facebook thinking it knows what image is associated with the URL in the tag and serving a stale cached version.
These are good steps for clearing the og tag cache, but it doesn’t do anything about the image cache.
Seriously, try it yourself. Upload a dummy image to your server, and add it as the og:image for a dummy webpage that you run through Facebook. Then change the image hosted at that URL, either by deleting the file and adding a new one of the same name or creating a server side redirect to a different image.
Then take your own advice for clearing the image cache by clicking “scrape again” on that dummy webpage until the new image shows up. Won’t do a thing.
I’d suggest changing your title to be about the tag cache that your advice actually works for. Unless, of course, you’re purposely trying to be deceptive by claiming to be able to fix a problem that appears to have no solution.
updated image shows in the debug page, but when posting a new link in facebook still shows old image.
Thank you so much for your help!
THANK YOU!