Instagram: How To Get On The Explore Page
Search Engine Journal says that getting on the Instagram Explore page takes more than simply completing a checklist. Here's how it works and how to optimise content for it.
Landing a spot on the Explore page is the best free exposure you can get on Instagram. Explore is a discovery engine that helps users find new content, and getting featured there is instrumental to growing an audience on Instagram. Over 200 million users visit the Explore page every day. It exclusively contains content from accounts users don't already follow.
That guarantees your posts will be seen by people outside of your existing audience. There's no exact formula to getting on the Explore page. But it helps if you know how the algorithm works. Understanding how Explore works allows you to optimize content for the ranking signals its algorithm looks for. First, let's break down the algorithm.
While the Instagram home feed displays content from friends, family, and other people you follow - the Explore page surfaces content from accounts that users have no direct connection to. When you want to change things up and dig into some photos and videos you haven't seen before, Explore is where you can go to find it. Instagram's Explore algorithm uses the same signals as the main feed to rank content. Those signals are:
Content goes through two stages before it ends up in the Explore recommendation system: the candidate generation stage (also known as the sourcing stage) and the ranking stage. When curating content for the Explore page, the algorithm begins by looking for "seed" accounts, which are accounts people have interacted with before. By analyzing the seed accounts, Instagram can find related accounts a person might be interested in. After the Explore algorithm rounds up a selection of seed accounts and similar-to-seed accounts, it analyzes the photos and videos the accounts have posted or engaged with. At the end of the candidate generation stage, the algorithm will have compiled thousands of eligible pieces of content (candidates) to show a user. Instagram then takes a sample of 500 of those candidates and sends them to the next stage.
The second stage of selecting content for Instagram Explore involves a three-pass filtering process. In the first pass, the algorithm narrows down the candidates from 500 to 150. Then the candidates are reduced from 150 to 50, and finally from 50 down to 25. Now the algorithm is ready to fill the Explore page with the highest-quality and most relevant posts. All of this happens in the blink of an eye every time a user visits the Explore page or pulls down to refresh it. The final 25 candidates are what is shown on the first screen of a person's Explore grid.
Landing a spot on the Explore page is the best free exposure you can get on Instagram. Explore is a discovery engine that helps users find new content, and getting featured there is instrumental to growing an audience on Instagram. Over 200 million users visit the Explore page every day. It exclusively contains content from accounts users don't already follow.
That guarantees your posts will be seen by people outside of your existing audience. There's no exact formula to getting on the Explore page. But it helps if you know how the algorithm works. Understanding how Explore works allows you to optimize content for the ranking signals its algorithm looks for. First, let's break down the algorithm.
While the Instagram home feed displays content from friends, family, and other people you follow - the Explore page surfaces content from accounts that users have no direct connection to. When you want to change things up and dig into some photos and videos you haven't seen before, Explore is where you can go to find it. Instagram's Explore algorithm uses the same signals as the main feed to rank content. Those signals are:
- Information about the post: Including captions, hashtags, location tags, likes, comments, etc.
- A user's activity on Instagram: The Explore page is personalized for each user based on what they engage with on Instagram.
- A user's history with the content creator: Content is more likely to appear in Explore if it's published by an account a user has interacted with before.
- Information about the content creator: Includes criteria such as the content they publish, how many followers they have, how much engagement their posts receive, etc.
Content goes through two stages before it ends up in the Explore recommendation system: the candidate generation stage (also known as the sourcing stage) and the ranking stage. When curating content for the Explore page, the algorithm begins by looking for "seed" accounts, which are accounts people have interacted with before. By analyzing the seed accounts, Instagram can find related accounts a person might be interested in. After the Explore algorithm rounds up a selection of seed accounts and similar-to-seed accounts, it analyzes the photos and videos the accounts have posted or engaged with. At the end of the candidate generation stage, the algorithm will have compiled thousands of eligible pieces of content (candidates) to show a user. Instagram then takes a sample of 500 of those candidates and sends them to the next stage.
The second stage of selecting content for Instagram Explore involves a three-pass filtering process. In the first pass, the algorithm narrows down the candidates from 500 to 150. Then the candidates are reduced from 150 to 50, and finally from 50 down to 25. Now the algorithm is ready to fill the Explore page with the highest-quality and most relevant posts. All of this happens in the blink of an eye every time a user visits the Explore page or pulls down to refresh it. The final 25 candidates are what is shown on the first screen of a person's Explore grid.
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