Instagram Ranking Factors: Feed, Story, Reels, & Explore

On May 31, 2023, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri published a blog post titled "Instagram Ranking Explained." In the article, he provides a detailed explanation of how Instagram determines the ranking of each type of content: the feed, stories, reels, and explore.

How does Instagram Determine Content Ranking?

There are many misconceptions about ranking on the platform because many users do not understand how their content is displayed. To address this, Instagram has helped content creators understand how the Instagram algorithm works through the blog post.

Instagram has updated its ranking algorithm to display what users are interested in. This new algorithm considers several factors, including the following:

• Account Activity.
• Post Interactions.
• User's Interactions with Friends and Family.
• User Habits.

Feed

The Instagram feed algorithm has been designed to consider various factors with the goal of optimizing the content experience for users. These factors include:

• Followed Accounts: The algorithm prioritizes posts from accounts that users follow, ensuring that liked content is prominently displayed.
• Past User Activity: Instagram considers posts that users have interacted with in the past, including actions such as liking, saving, sharing, and commenting. By considering this activity, the algorithm adjusts the feed to align with individual preferences.
• Post Interactions: The algorithm also evaluates how users interact with posts, noting the time spent and other behaviors. This information helps determine the level of interest and relevance of a post to an individual user.
• Interactions with Friends and Family: By considering interaction patterns from close relationships, the Instagram algorithm aims to identify content that may be interesting and relevant to users.

Story

The Instagram Stories algorithm, similar to the feed algorithm, combines additional factors to enhance the user experience. These factors include:

• Account Interactions: The algorithm prioritizes stories from accounts that frequently interact with users. This ensures that users can see stories from accounts they frequently engage with.
• Time of Day: Instagram displays more stories from accounts that are active at the same time as users. This aims to present the most relevant and up-to-date stories to each user.
• Closeness: Instagram considers the proximity of users to other users to display their stories. This ensures they don't miss updates from close connections.

Reels

The Instagram Reels algorithm shares similarities with the feed algorithm but also considers the following factors:

• Reel Duration: Instagram prioritizes longer Reels.
• Views and Likes: Instagram prioritizes Reels that have been viewed and liked by many people.
• Sound in Reels: Instagram prioritizes Reels that use popular sounds.
• Poster Identity: The person posting the Reels is also considered, including the number of followers they have.

Explore

When users search for something on Instagram through Explore, the app uses various factors to determine the results displayed to users, including:

• Keywords: Instagram gives higher priority to results relevant to the searched keywords.
• Last Activity: Instagram looks at the accounts you follow, posts you've liked, saved, shared, and commented on, as well as hashtags you've previously used.
• Interactions with Post Creators: Although Explore contains many unfamiliar people, if a user has previously interacted with an account, there is a high chance that posts from that account will appear in Explore.

Tips to Improve Content Performance on Instagram

In addition to sharing the Instagram algorithm, Adam Mosseri also provided some tips to improve content performance on Instagram. Here are the shared tips:

• Experiment: Try different approaches to understand the interests of the target audience on Instagram. Users can check Insights data to consider what content is preferred by followers.
• Create Quality Content: Improve the quality of content and always use original content. Instagram is also filtering out content from aggregator accounts that only repost other people's content.
• Collaborate: Collaborating with influential individuals will help expose content to a broader audience with similar interests.

That's the latest update on Instagram's ranking system shared through their official blog. By understanding these factors, content creators can enhance their content strategies to achieve their targeted goals.