Instagram Content Ranking Secrets Revealed

Written by: Online business Owner • February 21, 2022

Image Source: Instagram

Psst! Scoot closer – we’ve got some Instagram secrets to tell you!

New intel just dropped on how Instagram ranks and delivers content in the Feed, Stories, Reels and Explore.

In a recent Twitter thread, the photo and video-sharing app shared what goes on behind the scenes to make their algorithm come to life.

This comes on the heels of their June 2021 blog post where they broke down the full IG algorithm.

Instagram also finally spilled the beans and shared that Reels have their own dedicated ranking algorithm separate from how the rest of content is ranked on the platform.

Here is what the latest insider update reveals:

• Feed and Stories are ranked by…

  • Information about the post - Signals about how popular a post is and more mundane info about the content itself.

  • Information about the person who posted - Like how interesting the person might be to you and how many times you’ve interacted with that person in the past few weeks.

  • Your activity - What you might be interested in and how many posts you’ve liked.

  • Your interaction history - How interested you are generally in seeing posts from a particular person.

• Reels are ranked by…

  • Your activity - Which Reels you’ve liked, commented on, and engaged with recently.

  • Your interaction history - It’s likely the video was made by someone you’ve never heard of, but if you have interacted with them, that gives Instagram a sense of how interested you might be in what they shared.

  • Information about the Reel - Info about the content within the video like the audio track, video understanding based on pixels and whole frames, as well as popularity.

  • Information about the person who posted - Instagram says that they “consider popularity to help find compelling content from a wide array of people and give everyone a chance to find their audience”.

• Explore is ranked by…

  • A similar order as Feed and Stories.

  • But, your interaction history is given more attention than the post author.

You can check out a more detailed overview of how each ranking factor is determined in this breakdown from SocialMediaToday.com.

Why this matters for online business –

As always, we like to think about why Instagram (and their parent company Meta) REALLY do the things they do.

This sneak peek behind the algorithm curtain is probably, in part, to help creators better understand how to get the best results from the platform. We won’t discount that.

BUT, could it also be part of Instagram’s (and, of course, Meta’s) bigger 2022 goal to explain their algorithms and how they work due to pushback they received last year on how their platforms cause harm and civil unrest?

Whatever the reason, it’s helpful for online business owners to understand how their content is being ranked and distributed on Instagram and get better insight into what it takes to see results from the platform.

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