I interviewed 3 Instagram Employees And Studied 2,000+ Posts. Here’s How Instagram algorithm works in 2022

Instagram uses "Read Path Models" to rank content. It's an algorithm used by Developers to find the best outcome in a project or a basic filtering algorithm.

Here's How the algorithm works to rank your content on explore page and home!

Using “Write Path Classifiers” Instagram analysed Your Posts till 2019.

First your content is published after Instagram algorithm confirms its Community Guidelines.

After that, Algorithm classifies your content based on your Post Design and Captions.

Using Photo-recognition Instagram Scans your content finds similarities between your new piece of content and your audience’s previous interactions with your old content.

The same process occurs with your post captions. Your post instantly starts reaching your most followers and as engagement rises it gets on explore page.

In words of Instagram employee, This “Write Path Classifiers” algorithm didn’t tracked most important metrics to keep the explore page. That’s why they started building a new version of the algorithm that you can read below!

How The New Algorithm Works!

The new algorithm uses 3 Crucial ways to source content for Your Instagram Explore feed!
1. Calculation of Engagement
Instagram algorithm calculates real-time engagement and upload time signals to consider your post for Explore page.

In simple words, Instagram measures how much engagement creators at your level get and how much engagement your recent posts and how’s the engagement growing since the upload time.

Tip: Look at your insights and see what time your followers are highly active and post 40-70 minutes before the peak time.

2. Content Sourcing for Explore Page

This step constitutes search queries from Instagram users related to your post.

Instagram finds targeted users to show your post to them based on their search queries. Your post will show up on top of their explore page.

A Post on “Start Your Entrepreneurship Journey” will be shown to people searching for entrepreneurship to a small query about passive income.

From those queries Instagram source content for explore page.

3. Ranking Step for Explore Page

How long you rank on Instagram page and to what audience depends on the engagement you get when you start ranking on explore page.

After the sourcing step is passed that means your content is eligible to rank on explore page.

And during this step, tracking engagement metrics and their growth algorithm keeps your Post on Explore Page.

4. Sensitivity Control

Instagram announced Sensitivity control last year which impacted Instagram explore algorithm again!

What’s changed?

Instagram launched two new filters one High precision and low precision filters to maintain better content on Instagram for Different audiences.

Explore page changes every second with every refresh. So, do your content’s target audience.

With these two filters, Instagram tries to track engagement from different-different users and changes pieces of content.

In simple words, Instagram doesn’t want to show people bad content. That’s why these filters work to run explore page content through database to find if it’s suitable to run for another minute, hour or day on Instagram.

5 Instagram Hashtags Algorithm Doesn’t Exist

You get Hashtags reach because Instagram’s old algorithm “Write Path Classifier” is applicable to every single format of content.

Means your content ranks on hashtags based on relevancy with your Post Image and Caption.

If it’s relevant and getting enough engagement to rank on Hashtags size. You will rank on hashtags. It’s not hard to crack hashtags algorithm. The advice is don’t focus on hashtags that much, and keep your eyes on creating content for explore page.

What I learned about Stories Algorithm

“Instagram story views increase and decrease based on “navigation” and “interaction”.

What's navigation?

In Instagram story insights, you will see a metric called “navigation” and below that you will see

Back- means the follower swiped back to see your last story or someone else's story they saw before! Forward- means the follower clicked to see your next story Next story- the follower moved to see someone else's story Exited- means the follower left the stories.

Founded: If your story have more forward and next stories. Then Instagram will push your stories to more followers as they want users to watch more stories and stay in stories tab.

Why?: After 2-3 stories they hit users with an ad!

Interactions: Polls/ Question stickers/ Quiz

When viewers interact with these story features. Instagram sees that followers are interacting more than before and that's why they start pushing it more

How interactions like “profile visits” effect story views?

Yes, if your followers are visiting your profile through stories. Then that particular story (if its the first one) will receive more views than average as my story with 44 profile visits received the most views. So, you should do something worth a profile visit!

The New Reels Algorithm

I didn’t get much out of the conversation about Instagram reels from employees at IG.

But the only tip was to maintain the highest quality of video while uploading because while content distribution through Instagram processors your video might lose some quality.

That’s all I have for you, this took a while I would appreciate an upvote.

[Also You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive 1 social media marketing analysis, 4 resources and covering all social media updates.]

You can subscribe through link in my bio to receive for free!

reddit ...read more