When sharing a link via text or social media, the post automatically uses the set Cover Image.
The image displayed with your site URL is typically the image set as the Cover Image for the page you are sharing. If you don't know how to update your page's Cover Image, please view our Cover Image guide for more details.
This article will provide you with suggestions to correct inaccurate link preview images when sharing your site on social media.
Possible issues and how to solve them
Occasionally, the image you have set as your page's Cover Image may not properly display when sharing your link via social media. This issue is almost always caused by improper link preview caching within the social media app from which you are sharing your link.
To troubleshoot this, try sharing your link from multiple social media platforms and via text messaging. If some social media platforms display your link preview correctly, but another does not, the issue is likely stemming from the platform that is not displaying your preview correctly.
In some cases, there may be a solution to this. For example:
- LinkedIn: You can use their Post Inspector tool
- Facebook: You can use their Sharing Debugger tool
- Telegram: You can use their Webpage Bot tool
Other platforms, like Instagram and Twitter (X), do not provide tools to clear the cache associated with your link previews. In this case, there is unfortunately no action you can take to force a link preview update, and you must instead wait for this to update on their end. This could potentially take hours, days, or over a week.
Some social media platforms may provide customer support options, in which case you can contact them for additional assistance to see if they can update your link previews on their end. Please note that support options will vary from platform to platform.
Cover Image won't update in Format
If you are unable to change a page's Cover Image from within your Format account, please try our basic cache clearing steps first, outlined in the Clearing your browser's cache article, to ensure the issue isn't stemming from your browser.
If you continue to experience issues beyond this, please reach out to our Success team via live chat or email us at info@format.com.
Still have questions? Reach us on our live chat or email us at info@format.com. We’re here to help!