How Facebook News Feed
Works
This is the ultimate guide to how Facebook chooses what to
show in your News Feed, and how you can get your content seen by more people.
Understanding how the News Feed works is tough because the
algorithm is always changing. So TechCrunch launched this research project for
today’s 10th anniversary of News Feed, interviewing Facebook’s team members,
compiling the company’s announcements, and reviewing a decade of our coverage.
The result is this helpful explainer, which we’ll keep updated as new changes
roll out so it’s always accurate.
The
Goal Of News Feed
Facebook’s objective is to select the most relevant and
engaging stories to show in the News Feed. It wants to choose the best content
out of several thousand potential stories that could appear in your News Feed
each day, and put those in the first few dozen slots that you’ll actually
browse through.
These stories get ranked and shown in order of importance,
from big stuff like your sibling getting married or a news article that 10 of
your friends have shared, to the average links shared by brands to their
websites, to boring stories like a distant acquaintance RSVPing for an event.
Facebook prioritizes stories you’ll Like, comment on, share,
click, and spend time reading, which we’ll refer to as “engagement”. Facebook
also runs both online surveys and offline focus groups to get more feedback
about what stories people think should appear.
The more engaging the content, the more you’ll come back to
Facebook, and the better it can accomplish its mission of connecting people
while also earning revenue from ads shown in News Feed.
The
Natural Decline Of Reach
Over time as more people and Pages join Facebook and each
shares more content, there’s more competition for the limited available space
in the News Feed. While people have increased the amount of time they spend on
the News Feed over the past 10 years, viewership hasn’t grown as fast as the amount
of stories shared.
This causes a natural decline in the reach of what’s posted
to the News Feed, in terms of the percentage of people who see a story out of
everyone eligible to see it. This is why Facebook Pages see the percentage of
their followers who see their content shrinking over time. It’s an inevitable
result of people sharing more frequently, rather than some conspiracy of
Facebook’s to force businesses to buy ads.
The best way for you to counteract this decline of reach for
your own content is to learn what Facebook’s algorithm prefers.
The
Main Factors Influencing What You See
So how does Facebook’s algorithm choose what appears in what
order? It assigns each story a personalized relevancy score that’s different
for each person that sees it, and puts the most relevant stories first. The
algorithm takes into account thousands of different signals. But here are the four main factors that decide a story’s personalized
relevancy score, and therefore its visibility to that user.
Who Posted It – The more you’ve interacted
with a post’s author in the past, the more interested Facebook thinks you’ll be
in their future posts. This interaction could be engagement such as Liking or
commenting, but also clicking or slowing down to read their posts, visiting
their Page or profile, tagging them or being tagged together in posts or
photos, and many other actions on Facebook. This is why you don’t see post from
old friends or Pages you haven’t interacted with in years.
How Other People Engaged With The Post –
The more that other people have engaged with a particular post, the more likely
that Facebook will show it to you too. Sometimes people and Pages post boring
things few interact with, so it lets them sink into obscurity. But if a high
percentage of people who do see a post at first do engage, Facebook knows it’s
interesting and keeps showing it to more people.
What Type Of Post Is it – The
more that you typically engage with a certain kind of post (status, link,
photo, video, event, job change, content from another app), the more Facebook
will show you posts of that type. Different people enjoy different kinds of
posts. I might love reading news articles, you might love watching videos.
Facebook matches people to post types so if you never watch videos, you won’t
see as many.
When It Was Posted – The more recently a story
was posted, the more likely you are to see it. However, Facebook also detects
when you last checked the NewsFeed, and will rank older, good posts higher if
you haven’t logged in since they were posted and haven’t seen them. Check every
few minutes or hours, and Facebook will prioritize very recent posts. Go
offline for a week and Facebook might surface a big story like your best friend
having a baby even if it was posted 5 days ago.
Combined, these factors have a heavy influence on how high
up in the News Feed a post appears. Over time as you interact with the News
Feed, Facebook learns what you care about and evolves that understanding if
your behavior changes.
There are also several other significant factors that
determine what you see in the News Feed, though not as heavily as those above
How Many Others Have Posted the Same Thing –
Facebook creates highly-ranked aggregations of posts when lots of friends or
Pages post the same thing. If a dozen friends have all posted the same news
article or video, Facebook assumes it’s a big deal and displays a “Josh
Constine and 11 other friends shared…” story higher up in the News Feed.
New Facebook Products –
When Facebook releases a new product such as Live video or Slideshows, the
company needs to test how much people want to interact with it. It may
initially show too many or too few News Feed stories about the product until it
receives enough feedback to learn the appropriate level of visibility.
How
Ads Get Inserted
Facebook also injects ads into the News Feed. These don’t
replace any naturally visible post but instead just get injected in between
them, pushing down the ones that come after.
Facebook uses a similar but separate ranking algorithm to
determine whether you’re likely to be interested in a Page or business’ ads.
Facebook limits the number of ads you see, and therefore wants to maximize the
likelihood that the ones it shows you will get you to click, since clicks earns
it more money.
The more Facebook knows about you, the more relevant the ads
will be. If you fill out your profile and Like the Pages of things you care
about, Facebook’s ads will become more personalized and relevant, informing you
about products, apps, events, and more that you’re truly interested in.
Controlling
Your News Feed
Facebook gives you both implicit and explicit ways to teach
the News Feed what you want to see.
Implicit signals come from your normal behavior on Facebook.
If you keep Liking stories from a certain friend or about a particular topic,
you’ll see more of them. If you always skim past someone’s posts or never click
on the stories shared by a Page, you’ll see less of them. That’s why it’s
important to actually Like things you like, and not pity-Like things you don’t
really care about just to be nice to someone.
Facebook also provides explicit tools for directly telling
News Feed what you do and don’t want to see. Every story has a little drop-down
arrow in the top right corner that lets you:
·
Hide a post so you stop seeing it
and see fewer stories similar to it
·
Unfollow the author so you don’t see
any more of their posts
·
Save the story for later, which
tells Facebook to show you more posts similar to it
·
Turn on notifications, so you’re
alerted of future posts by that author
There’s also a See First option available in the News Feed
settings. This lets you pick people or Pages whose posts you always want to see
at the top of your News Feed, which can be useful for staying informed about a
loved one, best friend, favorite brand, or your own business.
An
Updated List Of News Feed Algorithm Changes
Facebook is constantly tweaking the News Feed. It adapts to
prevent people from gaming or tricking the system, embrace new media types, and
correct flaws that lead people to see things they don’t care about. Facebook
publishes News Feed FYI blog posts to
be transparent about the changes.
This article will adapt too. As Facebook publishes more
FYIs, we’ll add them to this list with a short summary of what each means. That
way you can keep referencing this article and share it with friends or
colleagues that don’t understand how News Feed works. Here are all the News
Feed change announcements so far:
High Quality Posts From Pages –
Timely, relevant, from a source you trust, you would share it or recommend it,
genuinely interesting and not trying to game the News Feed, not low quality or
a meme, wouldn’t complain, doesn’t get hidden, complete Page profile, fan base
overlaps with other high quality Pages.
More Relevant Ads – Fewer ads that
other people hide, Fewer ads similar to ones people have already hidden
Higher Quality News – More links to
high quality articles, Fewer links to meme photos, related articles to ones you
clicked, highlighting stories with new comments
More Status Updates From Friends –
More text status updates from friends, fewer text status updates from Pages,
more link share stories from Pages, fewer text updates with embedded links from
Pages
Cleaning Up News Feed Spam – Fewer
Page posts that explicitly ask people to Like, comment, or Share. Fewer Page
posts that have already been shared by that Page, fewer spammy links that use
inaccurate language or formatting to trick people into clicking
Showing Better Videos – More
videos people watch and watch for a long time, more videos to people who watch
videos and fewer videos to people who skip videos
Fighting Click Bait – Fewer
links that don’t tell people much about what they’re clicking to, fewer links
to web pages where people don’t spend much time and come right back to
Facebook, more links to web pages where people spend a lot of time, more links
to web pages people talk about after visiting and fewer links to web pages
people don’t talk about after visiting, more stories with links shared with the
link format and fewer stories with links in the description or caption of a
photo or video.
Incorporating Feedback About Ads –
Using surveys about why people hide ads, fewer similar ads to ads someone hid
because it wasn’t relevant to them, fewer ads shown to anyone that people hide
because they were offensive, more heavily weighting the hides by people who
infrequently hide ads
More Timely Stories – More stories that reference
current Trending Topics, more stories shown soon after they’re posted if people
Like them soon after they’re posted but Like them less later
More Control Over What You See –
When you hide someone’s story, you can select to see less from that person in
the future without completely unfollowing them
Reducing Promotional Page Posts –
Fewer posts that solely push people to buy a product, install an app, enter a
sweepstakes, or that reuse the exact same content from ads.
Minimizing Hoaxes – Fewer posts that people flag
as hoaxes or delete after posting because they are scams or deliberately false
news
Showing More Content From Friends More
posts from friends instead of Pages, fewer stories about friends Liking or
commenting on a post, more posts from the same sources for new users without
much content in their News Feed
The See First Feature – A new feature lets you
choose friends or Pages whose stories you want to see first at the top of your
News Feed
Improving News Feed For Slow Connectivity –
Fewer videos and more status updates and links shown to people with slow
Internet connections, re-showing stories you’ve already loaded if you have no
Internet connection
Offline News Feed – When someone has slow
connectivity, Facebook will re-rank previously downloaded stories by relevance
and display them instead of a loading symbol
Matching Reactions And Stories –
Over time, Facebook hopes to show people more stories similar to the ones they
React to in a certain way, so people who often use the “Haha” Reaction see more
funny stories
Incorporating Time Spent Viewing Sites –
More links to Instant Articles and mobile web pages loaded inside of Facebook
that people spend more time viewing, fewer posts in a row from the same Page
We’ll add more News Feed FYIs as they’re published to keep
this list up to date.
News
Feed Strategy
The best tactics for appearing prominently in the News Feed
end up being quite straight-forward: share things that are interesting,
authentic, and resonate with your audience. That typically means visually
compelling media, funny or emotional content, and important news that’s
fascinating to a wide audience.
Avoid overly self-promotional spam, dry or long-winged
content, and boring looking media that only appeals to a fraction of your
audience.
So before you post, ask yourself, is this actually
interesting or entertaining to other people? Or are you just vainly bragging
about your life or greedily marketing your business?
Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is complex, but the humans it
serves are still pretty simple. We all just want to be stimulated. Do that, and
Facebook will share what you have to say.
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