It is forever changing, entirely overwhelming and slightly confusing but can be a great benefit if you take the time to understand it, what is it? THE INSTAGRAM ALGORITHM. Instagram has just released a new breakdown about their algorithm, and we are here to summarise this for you.

There are many misconceptions surrounding the Instagram algorithm, and in this blog, we aim to help you understand exactly how ranking works on Instagram and what features have been introduced to enhance the overall app experience.

How Instagram Ranks

The most important thing to note here is that Instagram’s main goal is to optimize users time on the app, and they do this mainly by personalizing our experience using technology. They personalise our feed not by using a single algorithm that determines what we see but rather various algorithms, classifiers, and processes, each with its own purpose. Different parts of the app, such as Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, and Search, use their own algorithms tailored to how people use them. For example, when viewing Stories, people typically look for updates from close friends, while explore helps you discover new content and creators. Instagram ranks content differently in these sections and offer features like Close Friends, Favorites, and Following, so we can customize your experience further.

Each part of Instagram has its own algorithm: Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, Search.

Feed:

This is your personalized home base on Instagram, where people usually catch up with friends, family, and interests. Your feed will consist of a mix of content from the accounts you follow, recommended content from accounts Instagram thinks you’ll enjoy, and ads (videos, photos, and carousels). Let’s break down how the ranking algorithm works:

• First, Instagram defines the set of content to rank. For Feed, this includes recent posts from the accounts you follow and posts from accounts you don’t follow but might interest you (this is determined by the accounts you follow, the content you’ve engaged with recently, and your preferences). They try to balance content from accounts you follow and accounts you don’t.
• Next, they consider all the information available about the posts, the people who posted them, and your preferences. They analyze signals such as your activity (likes, shares, comments), post information (popularity, posting time, location), and the person who posted (engagement with their content). These signals help the algorithm understand your interests and personalize your feed accordingly.
• Based on this information, Instagram then makes predictions about how likely you are to interact with a post in different ways. The key interactions they consider here are spending time on a post, commenting, liking, sharing, and tapping on the profile photo. The higher the likelihood of an action and its importance, the higher the post appears in your feed. We also take other factors into account, such as avoiding consecutive posts from the same person or too many suggested posts in a row.
• When someone posts something that could put another person’s safety at risk, we act (this is where Instagrams Community Guidelines come in) and this applies to all parts of Instagram, not just the Feed. Posts that break these guidelines are removed and when recurring, Instagram will actually limit that user from using certain features like Instagram Live or suspend their account.
• Instagram does show certain content less in the Feed and Stories and this includes posts that our systems predict might violate our rules, content that has been fact-checked by third-party organizations (or accounts that repeatedly share this content), and posts that we believe you are likely to report.

Stories:

Stories are a way to share everyday moments and get closer to the people and things you care about. The Stories you see come from accounts you follow and sometimes include ads. Just like with the Feed, when Instagram rank Stories:

• Firstly, they start by gathering all the potential Stories from accounts you follow (excluding ads) and remove any that break our rules.
• They then consider different things to decide the order of the Stories such as viewing history, engagement history, closeness, and past interactions
• Using these signals, they make predictions and decide which Stories you’ll find more interesting and valuable. They consider factors like how likely you are to tap into a Story, reply to a Story, or move on to the next one – determining which Stories appear higher in your Stories tray.

Explore:

Explore is meant to help you discover new things. It’s a grid of recommended photos and videos that we find for you from accounts you don’t follow yet. The process of Instagram putting together your explore feed looks a little something like this:

• First, they gather a set of posts to rank (photos and videos you might like) and they base this set on past activity (posts you have previously liked, saved, shared, and commented on)
• They then put this set of content in order based on how much they think you’ll like each one. It’s similar to how we rank the Feed and Stories. The best way for Instagram to guess your interest in something is to predict what you’ll do with the post. To rank Explore, we use information about the post, your past activity in Explore, and information about the person who posted.
• Most of the content you’ll see in Explore is from people you don’t follow.
• Instagram has rules for what we recommend in places like Explore, Reels, Search, Suggested Posts in the Feed, and Suggested Accounts. They call these their Recommendations Guidelines. Posts that go against these guidelines can still be on Instagram, but some people might find them sensitive or offensive. For example, they try not to recommend content showing violence, or content promoting certain regulated products like tobacco, vaping, or drugs.
• Over the years, Instagram has added new controls so that we (as users) can have more influence on the types of content that is recommended to us (Sensitive Content Control and the ability to indicate “Not Interested” next to posts.)

Reels:

Reels, just like your explore feed, were designed to help you discover new things. However, here, Instagram has an additional emphasis on entertainment. The majority of what you see in your reel feed is content from accounts you don’t follow and so Instagram uses a very similar process to the explore feed. They first source a set of reels that they think you might like and then order them based on how interesting they think the content will be to you. Instagram also surveys people and asks whether they found a particular reel worth their time and learns from the feedback. The most important predictions they make throughout this process are: how likely you are to reshare a reel, watch a reel all the way through, like it, and go to the audio page (will you be inspired to make your own reel?).

To rank Reels, Instagram considers your activity, information about the reel, and the person who posted and apply the same Recommendation Guidelines as Explore. They make certain reels less visible for 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.

To conclude, Instagram does heavily influence the things you see and don’t see, however, this influence is mainly based on how you interact with the profiles and content you enjoy/don’t enjoy. Instagram uses different algorithms for different parts of the app and their main goal is to keep you engaged for as long as possible. The app has also introduced various additional features that allow you to further personalise your experience and control the content that you see or that is recommended to you.