Why Reddit previews go stale

Reddit fetches page metadata once via Embedly at post creation. The title, description, and thumbnail are stored permanently and never refreshed. Updating your tags after the fact changes nothing on existing posts.

The Embedly caching layer

Embedly maintains its own cache that lasts several hours. Even if you fix your OG tags and submit a new post, Embedly may still return the old data. Two layers of caching – Embedly’s multi-hour cache feeding into Reddit’s permanent storage – make this particularly frustrating to debug.

Workarounds

Delete and repost

Delete the post with the stale preview, wait for Embedly’s cache to expire (a few hours), and submit the URL again.

Append a query string

Force a fresh fetch by making the URL look new:

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

Both systems cache by exact URL, so the query parameter triggers a clean scrape. The downside: upvotes, comments, and karma on the original post are lost.

Pre-test in r/test

Test in r/test first. If the preview is wrong, fix your tags and test again with a new query parameter. This way you catch problems before the URL gets cached in a post that matters.

Prevention

Get your OG tags right before the URL gets shared:

1. Confirm meta tags are in the raw HTML, not injected by JavaScript
2. Check embed.ly/code to see what Embedly extracts
3. Submit a trial post in r/test
4. Use stable image URLs – don’t change og:image after launch
5. Include og:image:width and og:image:height so Embedly ranks your image confidently

Existing posts cannot be updated

There is no way to update the preview on an existing Reddit post. Not through moderator tools, the admin panel, or the API. The only option is to delete the post and create a new one.