How Google Chat caches link previews

Previews are cached per-message at send time. Once generated, a message’s preview won’t update even if your OG tags change. There’s no documented cache TTL – the preview is effectively permanent for that message.

Triggering a fresh fetch

Share the URL in a new message. Google’s fetcher re-crawls the page and generates a fresh preview. Old messages keep their original preview.

No public debugger

Google provides no tool to debug or force-clear Chat link previews. No equivalent to Facebook’s Sharing Debugger. The only way to see updated tags is to share the URL in a new message.

Enterprise considerations

Google Workspace admins can configure link preview settings at the org level. If no URLs generate previews, it may be an admin policy, not a caching issue.

When caching goes wrong

• Updated tags but old preview showing – share in a new message for fresh data
• Preview inconsistent across spaces – each message caches its own preview at send time
• Preview image disappeared – the original image URL may have become unavailable