10/21/2026
Curious about how Instagram ranks content and why?
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri recently released a series of videos on ranking on the platform.
First, why does Instagram rank content?
For users, it's to help them find content they're interested in. For creators, it's to help them gain a larger audience share.
If Instagram does not rank content, the feed is dominated by accounts that post the most often, which would mean businesses and brands, not creators and your friends. Additionally, people see less content, and the average reach for creators decreases.
He also notes that there is no one algorithm ranking content on Instagram. There are multiple algorithms for different places, like Reels, Explore, your feed, and Stories.
In general, there are two types of algorithms on the platform: one to rank content from accounts you follow and one to rank content from accounts you don't.
These rankings are based on predictions on how you will interact with a specific post (e.g. like, comment, send to a friend, watch a video to the end). These actions are all proxies for how interested you might be in content.
Beyond engagement, Mosseri mentions four principles for the algorithms: originality, recency, breaking content (showing content from smaller creators to accounts that don't follow them to see how people respond), and model size (larger models for ranking content).
