Instagram has revealed the “suggestions algorithm” in its official blog. What do we know now?

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Forget about hashtags

Instagram has disproved the fact that users need to write popular hashtags if they want to be in top. There is no “general top”: every person regards his or her own “Suggestions” (or Explore), which are always updated.

You can’t trick Instagram with markups: their AI does 90 million predictions in a second. The maintenance of such powers affects on Instagram’s budget.

Saves and likes are significant

Artificial Intelligence consists of 3 layers of neural networks. The filter posts with such vortex: milliards of posts — 500 candidates — 150 — 25 finalists, that rule.

Mathematical model chooses the content concerning 2 indicators: “High Quality” (speed and number of received reactions) and “Freshness”.

Instagram accounts that publish nudes, aggressive sales, posts about plastic surgery, misinformation (e.g. disservise of vaccination or Overtone’s Window) have no chances to appear in the Explore.

Words are worthy, more than images

Curious, but images are not important for the Instagram algorithms. They focus on words combinations in your posts.

Instagram engineer demonstrates an example: if you write words “music” and “festival” in your post, it will show up in the category “Music Festivals” and will be available for those, who are fans of Flow or Sonar.

In conclusion, if your blog consists of different topics (one post is about psychology, another one is about gardening and so on), it won’t be “suggested” for users.

Separate posts aren’t important. Think of the blog’s “carma”

The decision to advance your blog to the “Suggestions” or not made by the System depends not on separate posts, but on the whole account. Besides, not only posts, but also stories, IGTV videos and shopping posts appear in the Explore.

You can manage Explore

If the neural network made a mistake, click on the right corner of the post and tap “See fewer posts like this”.

If you want to hint the algorithm what you really adore, click “Like” or add to “Saved” many one-topic posts during one session.