🧠 What I Learned Today: Fixing LinkedIn's Cached OG Image Like a Pro!

Ever pushed a shiny new Open Graph (OG) image on your website, shared it on LinkedIn... and saw the old version still pop up?
Yep - same here. Here's how I fixed it in less than 10 minutes, and what I learned in the process.

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🚩 Problem

I had just updated the OG image on my personal website. But when I tried sharing the link on LinkedIn, it still showed the previous version of the image.
At first, I thought maybe I made a mistake while uploading...

🖼️ [Screenshot: Old OG image being shown on LinkedIn]

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🕵️‍♂️ Investigating via LinkedIn Post Inspector

I headed to LinkedIn Post Inspector to see what was being cached.

Surprisingly, it showed the correct updated OG image - which meant LinkedIn's backend had already crawled and updated the image.

🧩 [Screenshot: Post Inspector showing the updated OG image correctly]

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🛠️ Solution: Cache Busting with [ ?v=2 ]

Turns out, LinkedIn aggressively caches images, even after you update them.

🔧 The Fix? A simple query string:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://ayushhardeniya.site/assets/website-pw-1.png?v=2">

Just by adding ?v=2 to the image URL, LinkedIn thinks it's a new resource.
I redeployed my website with the updated tag.

🧪 [Screenshot: Code editor showing updated OG tag with ?v=2]

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✅ The Result: Success!

Went back to Post Inspector, ran the URL again, and... bam! The updated OG image finally showed up.

🎉 [Screenshot: LinkedIn showing the updated image after purging]

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📚 What I Learned

• LinkedIn aggressively caches OG images (more than expected).

• Adding a simple ?v=2 or any version number is a clean way to bust cache.

• Tools like LinkedIn Post Inspector are gold for debugging social previews.

• Don’t forget to redeploy your site after editing meta tags.

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💬 Final Thought

Small fixes like these often seem trivial, but the clarity they bring to your digital identity is huge.
It was a 10-minute fix, but I enjoyed learning something new.

~Ayush Hardeniya