Facebook like - showing cached version og:image, way to refresh or reindex it?

FHM picture FHM · Sep 27, 2011 · Viewed 64.9k times · Source

Having an issue with Facebook like and a cached og:image.

Long story short: Facebook has cached an older version of our like image. The meta content URL can't be changed. Is there anything I can do to refresh it?

Long story: The site I'm working on has a meta tag for an og:image that Facebook uses when a page is liked. This meta tag uses the same image URL on all pages across the site. The image is simply a branding image for the site.

The issue is the site recently updated their branding, and we can't get the Facebook like image to update. When a user clicks the like link, the resulting post to Facebook still shows the old branding image.

The meta tag is similar to:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://[domain].com/images/bookmark/apple-touch-icon.png"/>

Whenever a like makes its way to Facebook, the URL to the image is changed to the cached Facebook URL, similar to this:

http://external.ak.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQDajxm-qgVNdfEL&w=90&h=90&url=http%3A%2F%2F[domain].com%2Fimages%2Fbookmark%2Fapple-touch-icon.png

This URL displays the older version of the site's branding. It has been over a week, and it has not updated yet.

Is there any way to force Facebook to reindex the image/clear it's cache? Or, does Facebook periodically do this automatically? I couldn't find any relevant information on this.

I know that changing the URL in the meta tag could fix the issue, but the meta tag is generated by code used across multiple sites and it can not be changed. I also tried the delinter tool as was suggested to me by others. No luck.

Answer

genesis picture genesis · Sep 27, 2011

Insert your URL into their linter and it should reload its cache