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New Delhi: Have you ever wondered how the Instagram algorithm works? How does it rank and rate your reels, stories, posts, and recommendations on the app? Understanding the parameters that influence these decisions can not only help you use the app more effectively but also be a valuable tool for creators looking to promote their content.

Instagram has recently released a comprehensive report explaining the inner workings of its app and shedding light on how content decisions are made and rankings determined. The report provides insights into the underlying patterns that drive the platform.

Instagram employs a combination of algorithms, classifiers, and processes to curate and rank the content that appears on your feed. Each section of the app—such as the feed, stories, explore, reels, and search—utilizes distinct algorithms designed to enhance user experience and personalization.

“We rank things differently in these different parts of the app, and have added features and controls like Close Friends, Favorites and Following so you can further customize your experience,” Instagram blog.

Let’s try to understand each part of Instagram one by one from feed to explore so you either as a creator or user gets a basic idea of how your feed or content is ranking there.

How Does Feed Rank?

Feed is your personalized home page where you see the content of those whom you follow, recommend content from accounts, and ads. You will find here  a mixture of videos, photos and carousels.

The app aims to provide a good personalize experience by keeping a balance between content from the accounts you follow with content from the accounts you don’t follow but might be interested in. So, the app uses the different metrics known as ‘signals’ that decide which content will go higher/lower.

There are many signals but the following ones are most important:

1. Our activity. Posts you’ve liked, shared, saved or commented on help us understand what you might be interested in.
2. Information about the post. These are signals both about how popular a post is – think how many people have liked it and how quickly people are liking, commenting, sharing and saving a post – and more mundane information about the content itself, like when it was posted, and what location, if any, was attached to it.
3. Information about the person who posted. This helps us get a sense for how interesting the person might be to you, and includes signals like how many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks.
4. Your history of interacting with someone. This gives us a sense of how interested you are generally in seeing posts from a particular person. An example is whether or not you comment on each other’s posts.

Thereafter, Instagram makes a calculated decision. These are educated guesses at how likely you are to interact with a post in different ways. 

Alongwith these factors, Instagram has community guidelines that apply not only to Fee, but all of Instagram. So, if you post something that goes against our community guidelines and if Instagram finds, it will take down. These can be offensive, hateful, sexual, and defaming content.

If this happens repeatedly, Instagram may prevent you from using certain sharing features, such as streaming on Instagram Live, and eventually it might suspend your account.   

How Do Stories Rank?

Stories are a way to everyday moments and grow closer to the people and interests you care about. Like feed, you see the stories of those people you’ve chosen to follow, as well as ads. Simililary, there are signals that plays an important role in ranking and community guidelines work here as well.

The signals are:

1. Viewing history. This looks at how often you view an account’s stories so we can prioritize the stories from accounts we think you don’t want to miss.
2. Engagement history. This looks at how often you engage with that account’s stories, such as sending a like or a DM.
3. Closeness. This looks at your relationship with the author overall and how likely you are to be connected as friends or family.

How Does Explore Suggest Content?

Explore helps you to discover new content – videos and photos on Instagram. They are a good way to find the content from the accounts you don’t yet follow.

The signals that help Instagram to decide content for you are:

1. Information about the post. Here we are looking at how popular a post seems to be. These are signals like how many and how quickly other people are liking, commenting, sharing, and saving a post. These signals matter much more in Explore than they do in Feed or in Stories.
2. Your activity in Explore. These are signals like posts you’ve liked, saved, shared or commented on and how you’ve interacted with posts in Explore in the past. If you interact with a specific type of post, we try to show you more content similar to the original post you interacted with.
3. Your history of interacting with the person who posted. Most likely the post was shared by someone you’ve never heard of, but if you have interacted with them that gives us a sense of how interested you might be in what they shared.
4. Information about the person who posted. These are signals like how many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks, to help find compelling content from a wide array of people.

However, Instagram has recommendation guidelines alongwith community guidelines to keep away those content that are in violation.

Note that if an account repeatedly posts content that goes against our recommendation guidelines or community guidelines, none of their posts will be eligible for recommendation for a period of time. You can utilize account status to understand if your account and content is eligible to be recommended on Instagram.

Users can use sensitive content control and ability to indicate ‘Not Interested’ that will influence the types of content it recommends to you.

How Do Reels Rank?

Reels are also designed to help you discover new things with an emphasis on entertainment. Here, you can see the accounts you don’t follow like Explore.

The most important signals, roughly in order of importance, are:

1. Your activity. We look at things like which reels you’ve liked, saved, reshared, commented on, and engaged with recently. These signals help us understand what content might be relevant to you.
2. Your history of interacting with the person who posted. As with Explore, it’s likely the video was made by someone you’ve never heard of, but if you have interacted with them, that gives us a sense of how interested you might be in what they shared.
3. Information about the reel. These are signals about the content within the video such as the audio track or visuals in the video, as well as popularity.
4. Information about the person who posted. We consider popularity signals such as number of followers or level of engagement to help find compelling content from a wide array of people and give everyone a chance to find their audience.

The same Recommendation Guidelines that apply to Explore apply to reels. Instagram aims to make certain reels less visible for other reasons, such as low-resolution or watermarked reels, reels that are muted or contain borders, reels that are majority text, reels that focus on political issues, or reels that have already been posted on Instagram.

Understanding the signals and optimizing your content accordingly will help the creators to have a better reach to audience on the platform. There is no guarantee but following the guidelines will definitely present your content more likeable and potential on the platform.