LinkedIn Link Previews: Why Images Don’t Always Pull Through (and How to Fix It)
This is a really common (and frustrating) issue on LinkedIn, and it’s caused by a mix of caching, metadata, and link-handling quirks. Here’s why it happens
1. LinkedIn’s link preview cache
LinkedIn scrapes the Open Graph (OG) metadata (title, description, and image) from a webpage the first time someone posts that link.
If the OG image wasn’t available or was too large at that moment, LinkedIn saves a blank or default preview.
Later posts using the same URL will reuse that cached version — even if the website has since fixed it.
LinkedIn’s cache can last a few weeks unless manually refreshed.
2. Redirects or tracking links (especially email campaign or UTM links)
If you post a link like
https://profundcom.com/redirect?u=https://example.com/article
LinkedIn sometimes scrapes the redirect page rather than the final destination — and that page often has no OG image.
Fix: always post the final destination URL in the LinkedIn composer, not a tracked or redirected one.
3. Image size or format
LinkedIn is picky:
Ideal OG image: 1200×627 px, < 5 MB, JPG or PNG.
If the image is too tall, too small (<200 px wide), or in an odd format (e.g., WebP, SVG), LinkedIn may skip it.
4. Manual post editing
If you paste a link and the preview shows up, then delete the URL before posting — the image preview sometimes vanishes after publishing.
Always let the preview load fully before removing the link text.
5. Private or geo-restricted pages
If the page blocks crawlers (e.g., via robots.txt or cookie walls), LinkedIn’s bot can’t fetch the image.
How to fix / test
Go to LinkedIn Post Inspector https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/
Paste your URL.
It will show you the current cached image and metadata.
Click “Inspect” again to refresh LinkedIn’s cache.
