How TikTok & Instagram actually rank your content

Meta publishes a page for each part of Instagram explaining what its ranking system predicts, and the Feed, Explore and Search pages were updated in June 2026. TikTok explained its For You feed in its own newsroom in 2020. Everything below comes from those pages, with the date of each.

TikTok's For You feed

TikTok says it ranks videos using three groups of information:

• How someone interacts with videos: the ones they like, share, comment on and watch to the end.
• What's in the video: captions, sounds and hashtags.
• Device and account settings: language, country and device type, which TikTok says carry less weight than the other two.

TikTok also wrote that whether someone finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end is a strong indicator of interest, and that neither an account's follower count nor its past high-performing videos are direct factors in the recommendation. The same page notes that bigger accounts may still get more views.

Source: TikTok Newsroom, "How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou" (June 18, 2020).

Instagram ranks each part of the app separately

Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, has explained that the app doesn't use one algorithm: Feed, Reels, Explore and Stories each rank posts their own way. Meta's own pages name what each one predicts.

• Feed (updated June 29, 2026): what you've followed, liked or engaged with recently, how long you spend on a post, whether you open the share sheet and send it to someone, who made the post, and what type of content it is.
• Reels (updated November 11, 2025): whether you watch more of a reel than 95 percent of the people who watched reels of the same length, and whether you share it off Instagram.
• Explore (updated June 22, 2026): whether you'll follow the author, watch more than five seconds, watch more than 95 percent of a video, like, comment, reshare or save it, or tap "Not Interested."
• Search (updated June 23, 2026): the words someone types are matched against an account's username and profile name, and against hashtags.

Mosseri's 2023 explainer also named follower count as one of the popularity signals used for Reels.

Sources: Feed, Reels, Explore and Search on Meta's Transparency Center; "Instagram Ranking Explained" (May 31, 2023).

What none of these pages say

None of them say the platform tags an account with a niche. Topic shows up from the viewer's side, as what someone has engaged with before and what they're interested in. The text an account controls is named for search: the username, the profile name, hashtags, and on TikTok, captions. Instagram's creator tips tell you to put keywords in your bio and captions.

The people behind the signals

Every signal on those lists is something a person does: watches to the end, sends a post to a friend, comments, follows. Your followers are people, and the research on why people do those things is the useful part. People pass on information that makes them look knowledgeable and helpful, and they share useful content most readily with one person (why people send your post to someone). They answer questions about themselves more readily than questions about someone else, and they say more when they can see you reply (how to get people to comment).

On video ads, a study of brand ads on YouTube found that emotional ads were shared more than informational ones and that ads showing the brand early were shared less (the virality breakdown has the details and the limits).

What to do with it

• Build for the finish. Watching to the end is named by TikTok and, for Reels and Explore, by Meta. Cut anything before the point of the video, and end when the point is made.
• Write for the send. Before you post, name the one person a follower would send it to.
• Ask a question people answer about themselves, then reply on the post where others can see it.
• Put the words people search in your name field, bio and captions. Those are the text fields the platforms name.

Sources: TikTok Newsroom (2020); Meta Transparency Center ranking pages (2025 and 2026); Instagram, "Instagram Ranking Explained" (2023); Instagram Creators, "Tips for improving your reach" (2023). Every page was opened on October 15, 2026.