One-shot scraping

Reddit fetches page metadata once via Embedly at the moment a link post is submitted. The title, description, and thumbnail are stored with the post and never refreshed. Reddit link previews are immutable after creation.

There is no purge button, no re-scrape endpoint, no way to update a preview on an existing post.

Embedly’s own caching layer

Embedly caches its extraction results for several hours independently of Reddit. Even if you fix your OG tags and immediately submit a new post, you may still get stale data if Embedly’s cache hasn’t expired. There is no public tool to purge Embedly’s cache.

This creates a two-layer problem: Embedly’s multi-hour cache feeds into Reddit’s permanent storage.

Workarounds for stale previews

1. Delete and repost – delete the post, wait for Embedly’s cache to expire (hours), then submit the URL again
2. Append a query string – force both Reddit and Embedly to treat the URL as new:

https://example.com/page?v=2

Both systems cache by exact URL, so ?v=2 triggers a fresh scrape. The trade-off: any upvotes and comments on the original post are gone.

1. Wait – if you’ve updated your tags but don’t want to change the URL, wait several hours for Embedly’s cache to expire before submitting a new post

Pre-submission testing

Since Reddit previews are permanent, get your OG tags right before the URL gets shared:

• Submit a trial link post in r/test
• Check Embedly’s extraction at embed.ly/code
• Confirm your tags are in the server-rendered HTML, not injected by JavaScript