How to clear Link Preview (Open Graph) Cache on Facebook
It is incredible to make a web page easily shareable on social media by ensuring it has an outstanding link preview when shared.
A link preview the information about the web page that gets fetched and displayed when sharing a URL on social networks and chatting apps. It comprises a preview image, the page title, a small description, and the domain name.
Example
The best and most effective way for creating such previews is through the use of Open Graph protocol which was built by Facebook specifically for sharing on social networks.
When the page content is shared on Facebook for the first time, the Facebook crawler will scrape and cache the metadata (preview information) from the URL shared. When the same URL gets shared on Facebook again, the preview will be fetched from the cached metadata.
While this is efficient in saving time in the subsequent shares on Facebook, it poses a challenge if changes have been made to the page open graph (preview) data. For instance, you may replace the preview image with a better one, or change the page title, description, etc.
This is a challenge because unless you clear the Facebook URL's open graph cache, the old preview will continue being shown instead of the new one when the same URL gets shared after the change.
Therefore, it is important to note that whenever you change the page open graph information to always clear the old one on Facebook.
How to clear link preview on Facebook
Follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Open Facebook Sharing Debugger.
Step 2: Enter the URL whose preview you want to clear then click on the "Debug" button.
You will be taken to another page with the information about the URL such as the fetched preview and the open graph properties identified among other details.
Step 3: Click on the "Scrape Again" button to scrape the updated preview.
The debugger will scrape the web page again and show the updated preview and open graph properties.
Step 4: Go to Facebook and post the link. The newly updated preview shows correctly.
