The default Home feed is still algorithmic. Knowing how it works can help you pull ahead of the competition.
Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2025 5:40 am
Here are the top signals the Instagram Story algorithm and the Feed algorithm use to predict what a user is most interested in:
The content itself: How popular is it? How many likes and comments does it have? When was it posted? If it’s a video, how long is it? Is it tagged with a location and, if so, which one?
Who posted it: How many times has a user line data interacted with content from the person who posted the content in previous weeks? How interesting do they find the person who posted?
User activity: How many posts has a user liked, and what were they about?
Interaction history: How interested is a user in content posted from a particular account? How often do they comment on those posts?
Pro tip: Engagement matters—the more likely Instagram thinks a user is to actually interact with a post, the higher that post will be ranked.
The five interactions Instagram uses most to rank posts in the Feed are: how likely someone is to spend time on a post, comment, like, reshare or tap the profile picture.
What to avoid in your Feed posts and Stories
Posting too often. Instagram tries to avoid showing too many posts from one person to users in a row.
Violating Instagram’s community guidelines: This is something you should avoid with all posts.
Posting misinformation. Do this too many times, and Instagram might make all of your content, not just the one post, harder to find.
How the Instagram Explore page algorithm works
If you’ve ever liked one too many dance videos only to find your whole Explore page is full of dance content, you already have an idea of how Explore works.
The content itself: How popular is it? How many likes and comments does it have? When was it posted? If it’s a video, how long is it? Is it tagged with a location and, if so, which one?
Who posted it: How many times has a user line data interacted with content from the person who posted the content in previous weeks? How interesting do they find the person who posted?
User activity: How many posts has a user liked, and what were they about?
Interaction history: How interested is a user in content posted from a particular account? How often do they comment on those posts?
Pro tip: Engagement matters—the more likely Instagram thinks a user is to actually interact with a post, the higher that post will be ranked.
The five interactions Instagram uses most to rank posts in the Feed are: how likely someone is to spend time on a post, comment, like, reshare or tap the profile picture.
What to avoid in your Feed posts and Stories
Posting too often. Instagram tries to avoid showing too many posts from one person to users in a row.
Violating Instagram’s community guidelines: This is something you should avoid with all posts.
Posting misinformation. Do this too many times, and Instagram might make all of your content, not just the one post, harder to find.
How the Instagram Explore page algorithm works
If you’ve ever liked one too many dance videos only to find your whole Explore page is full of dance content, you already have an idea of how Explore works.