Top Ranking Factors in the Facebook Algorithm

What exactly is Facebook (FB) looking for these days with their fancy new algorithm? Well, in looking at the FB "News Feed" moving forward, it’s important to distinguish between what FB considers “active” and “passive” interactions.

Sharing, commenting, and reacting, the 'active" interactions are the highest ranking factors... Clicking, viewing, or hovering are considered "passive” interactions and carry no weight in a posts relevancy score.

Commenting

In regards to active interactions FB considers "commenting" to be the number one criteria in deterring if a post is relevant. One VERY important thing to keep in mind is that tricky posts, which attempt to "trick" people into commenting, will actually harm a posts algorithm score.

So if the post is asking people to type "yes" the repetitive chain of "yes"s will lower the ranking rapidly.

Sharing

FB uses the amount of "shares" a post receives as the second criteria in determining a posts worthiness. These can be broken down into two types of "sharing": 1) When a person shares a post through messenger or their news feed. 2) When a person clicks on a post that was shared to them by a friend.

If the post continues to be shared (and commented on) the FB algorithm will increase the post's visibility in newsfeeds. If people do not share - or open- the shared content the post will lose relevancy and appear less and less in newsfeeds over a short period of time.

Reacting

FB's algorithm will use "reacting" as its 3rd active measurement to determine the frequency of a post's appearance. So each time a post get's a reaction emoji the relevancy score will increase.

Stay tuned for more FB algorithm insights in the blog posts to follow.