LinkedIn Post Inspector: How to Use It

A cut-paper link preview card with a grey landscape panel, two blank text bars and a small embossed seal in one corner

What does the LinkedIn Post Inspector do?

It is LinkedIn's own debugger for link previews. When someone pastes your URL into a post, a message or an article, LinkedIn fetches the page, reads its metadata and builds a card with a title, an image and a short description. The Post Inspector runs that same read on demand and shows you the result before anyone shares the link.

The Post Inspector page names three jobs, checked in November 2026: find data missing from your page that would give a better preview, see when LinkedIn last updated its data on the page and request a re-scrape, and debug issues by showing how LinkedIn extracts your metadata and what could have gone wrong. Those three jobs map to the three reasons you would open it: a new page, a changed page, and a broken card.

It reads the same Open Graph tags every other network reads. If you are new to them, start with the link previews and Open Graph hub, then come back here.

Inspect a URL, step by step

Open the tool
Go to https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/ in a browser. You will see a single address field and an Inspect button.
Paste the full URL
Paste the exact address you plan to share, including https:// and any trailing slash. Inspect the canonical address, not a short link, unless the short link is what you will post.
Press Inspect
Click Inspect. The tool fetches the page and shows the preview it would use, followed by the data it gathered.
Read the preview card
Check the image, the title and the description against what you meant to show. A missing image or a title pulled from the wrong place is the first thing to catch.
Read the data underneath
Look at the date LinkedIn last updated its data and at each property it lists. Where the tool flags missing data, note which tag it wants.
Fix, purge, inspect again
Change the tag on your site, clear your page cache and any CDN copy, then run the same URL through the tool again until the card is right.

Inspect only after your own cache serves the new tags, or LinkedIn reads the old ones.

Which tags does LinkedIn read for the preview?

LinkedIn's help article on making your website shareable says the source code must comply with the Open Graph protocol and with image requirements specific to LinkedIn's sharing module. In practice that means the four core tags below, printed once each in the page head.

Tag	What LinkedIn uses it for	Common fault
og:title	The headline on the card	Site name glued to the end, or a second title tag from another plugin
og:description	The line under the title, where shown	Empty, so the tool falls back to other page text
og:image	The card image	Relative path, blocked folder, or an image below LinkedIn's minimum
og:url	The address the card points to	Differs from the canonical link, so shares split between two URLs

For the image, the same help article lists a maximum file size of 5 MB, minimum dimensions of 1200 by 627 pixels and a recommended ratio of 1.91:1. It also notes that images under 401 pixels wide display as a thumbnail. The full set of LinkedIn sizes, including page and profile images, is on our LinkedIn image size reference. For the general 1200 by 630 crop and safe zone that works across networks, see the Open Graph image size guide.

Why does LinkedIn show the wrong image or title?

Almost always for one of two reasons: your page says something other than what you think, or LinkedIn is still holding what your page said earlier.

The first case is a markup problem. Two plugins each print an og:image, the theme adds a default logo, or the tag points at a relative path the crawler cannot resolve. The Post Inspector shows what LinkedIn actually took, which is the fastest way to see that the logo won over the featured image. The fix is one source of tags, covered in adding Open Graph tags in WordPress.

The second case is a cache problem. LinkedIn's help article on using Post Inspector to refresh a URL explains that if the same URL was shared before, the image may already be stored in the cache, and that is what you see when you add the link to a new post, message or article. Inspecting the URL is LinkedIn's documented way to refresh it.

A third, rarer case: the image meets every requirement but still does not appear. LinkedIn's shareable-website article says that in this situation your site may be blocking LinkedIn from pulling the image, or the image may sit in a protected directory. Check firewall rules, hotlink protection and any login wall on your uploads folder.

How the refresh works, and what it will not change

This is the part people miss. According to LinkedIn's refresh article, the changes affect only the URL's preview image and information for new posts that include it. The preview on any existing post with that URL stays the same.

A post you published yesterday with the wrong image keeps the wrong image after you inspect. To show the new card, you need a new post.
A draft you have open in the composer may still hold the old card. Remove the link, inspect, then paste it again.
LinkedIn does not document how long it keeps a cached preview before refreshing on its own, so do not wait for it; inspect after every change you care about.

Both tools fetch your page, show the card and the tags they read, and refresh the network's stored copy. The differences are in what each network documents about its cache. The comparison below sticks to what each platform's own pages say.

Question	LinkedIn Post Inspector	Facebook Sharing Debugger
Where	linkedin.com/post-inspector/	Meta's sharing debugger, linked from its webmaster guide
Tags read	Open Graph tags, per LinkedIn Help	Open Graph tags, plus fb:app_id for Insights
Refresh effect	New posts only; existing posts keep the old card	Re-scrape on request; see our debugger guide
Image caching	Not documented beyond the refresh note	Images are cached by URL and not updated unless the URL changes
Image minimum	1200 by 627 pixels, 5 MB maximum	See Meta's image guidance

The image row matters. Meta's guide to sharing for webmasters says images are cached based on their URL and will not be updated unless the URL changes, so to update an image you publish it at a new address. Doing the same for LinkedIn costs nothing and removes one variable: when you replace a share image, upload it as a new file rather than overwriting the old one. The full Facebook walkthrough is in how to use the Sharing Debugger.

Check the preview before LinkedIn sees it

The Post Inspector can only read a page that is live and public. For a staging page, a draft behind a login, or a template you are still editing, paste the page source into our paste-the-source preview checker. It runs in your browser and fetches nothing, so it shows which tags are present and which are duplicated before any crawler visits.

What goes wrong

Inspecting before purging. If your page cache still serves the old head, the Post Inspector stores the old tags again. Purge first, confirm in a private window, then inspect.
Expecting old posts to update. LinkedIn says the refresh affects new posts only. Repost, or accept the old card on the old post.
Overwriting the image file. Same filename, new pixels. Give the new image a new URL so no layer, yours or a network's, can serve the old file.
An image below the minimum. LinkedIn asks for at least 1200 by 627 pixels and notes that images under 401 pixels wide show as a thumbnail.
A blocked uploads folder. Hotlink protection or a firewall rule that refuses unknown agents stops the image even when the tags are perfect.
Two sets of tags. An SEO plugin and a share plugin both printing og:image. The tool will show one; it may not be yours.
Inspecting a different URL from the one you share. With and without www, with and without a trailing slash, or with tracking parameters, these are separate addresses to LinkedIn's cache.

Check the LinkedIn Post Inspector fix worked

View source, logged out, and find exactly one each of og:title, og:description, og:image and og:url.
The og:image URL opens in a private window over https, without a login, and the file is at least 1200 by 627 pixels.
The Post Inspector shows the image, title and description you expect, with a last updated time from today.
Pasting the link into a new LinkedIn post shows the same card in the composer.
The URL you inspected is character for character the URL you will post.

Sources

Questions

Do I need a LinkedIn account to use the Post Inspector?

LinkedIn's help pages do not state an account requirement for the tool. It lives at linkedin.com/post-inspector/; if it asks you to sign in, sign in with any member account, then paste the URL and press Inspect.

Why does my old LinkedIn post still show the old image?

Because the refresh only applies to new posts. LinkedIn Help says the preview for existing posts with the URL stays the same after you use the Post Inspector, so publish a new post to show the corrected card.

How do I clear the LinkedIn cache for a link?

Run the exact URL through the Post Inspector after your own page cache serves the new tags. LinkedIn documents this as the way to refresh a URL's stored preview for future posts, messages and articles.

What image size does LinkedIn want for link previews?

LinkedIn Help lists a minimum of 1200 by 627 pixels, a maximum file size of 5 MB and a recommended ratio of 1.91:1. Images narrower than 401 pixels display as a small thumbnail instead of a full card.

Is the Post Inspector the same as the Facebook debugger?

No. They do a similar job for different networks and keep separate caches. Fixing a preview on one does not refresh the other, so run the URL through each network's own tool after every change.

Hannah Voss, Editor. Checks every guide against a working WordPress install and the networks' current documentation. Last reviewed September 2026.

About the editor and our methods

What does the LinkedIn Post Inspector do?

Inspect a URL, step by step

Open the tool

Paste the full URL

Press Inspect

Read the preview card

Read the data underneath

Fix, purge, inspect again