I have an account with several hundred thousand followers. I’ve been shadow banned numerous times in the past where posts don’t show in hashtags, don’t hit explore, and the insights stay at less than 1% discovery. However, this is not what is happening.
My posts have significant reach in hashtags according to post insights (between 8k and 25k impressions on most posts) with discovery percentages ranging from 10-30%. However, none of my posts are in any hashtags. I understand hashtags are different for each person but I have checked on numerous accounts, internet browsers, had other people check, etc. They aren’t there. There is no explore line either.
I do show up in location tags which is another piece of evidence that I am not shadow banned. I am assuming this is some kind of IG glitch that will correct itself but I’ve been doing this for several years and have never seen this. Has anyone else been experiencing this or have any insights?
Check out the insights of this post. It’s clearly not a shadow ban with that many impressions from hashtags but the post (and all my posts) are no where to be found. There is no explore either.
It’s quite normal that if your post gets popular and gets to the explore page it’s removed from hashtag search. I’ve tested that by boosting engagement with comments, likes and saves from other big accounts and at the beggining my post was visible under hashtag and it dissappeared when snowball started rolling.
Don’t remember the name of article but you can find numerous news regarding that:
Instagram finally confirmed to TechCrunch and other outlets in June 2018 that the ‘what is Instagram shadowban?’ dilemma was was total bullshit. From that article:
Instagram doesn’t downrank users for posting too frequently or for other specific behaviors, but it might swap in other content in between someone’s if they rapid-fire separate posts.
Instagram doesn’t give extra feed presence to personal accounts or business accounts, so switching won’t help your reach.
Shadowbanning is not a real thing, and Instagram says it doesn’t hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags or taking other actions.
Bottom line is, if Instagram or Facebook would be doing shadowbans… its pure violation of human rights, laws about monopoly and their TOS.
I would honestly report it. IG has so many issues right now, so many people are having problems with it. It is honestly sad how bad its gone to shit. Let us hope they will improve instead of adding new features and ruining the app
I can’t be any clearer. Instagram hashtag results are personalized. Every single person on Instagram will see a different post order for the same hashtag. Even if you have a billion followers, your posts will not be shown to everyone. You are not guaranteed to see your own posts in hashtag results, even in the chronological tab.
Yes, I am aware of that. However, I have had more than 10 people check and no one can see my posts. I used to see all of my posts in recent. Now, I don’t see any. My last post has over 40k impressions from hashtags yet no one can find them. All my posts usually hit explore and none have since this started a few days ago. It’s definitely not normal.
So I just looked at one of my friends’ account. She is shadow banned (her post from 12 hours ago is not even showing in recent nor top tab of a 1000ish post hashtag) but she still got a few thousand impressions (not as many as before she was shadow banned) from hashtags. She used a few huge hashtags (those hashtags may have a lot of followers). So maybe there is a type of partial shadow ban where you don’t get ranked but people who follow the hashtags may still see your post?
Is your friend showing up in location tags? When I’ve been shadow banned in the past, insights would not even have an explore line and I would not be in locations either. Now, I have 45,000 impressions from hashtags on some posts despite no one being able to find them and I am visible in locations. It seems more like a bug than a shadow ban unless it’s a new type of shadow ban.
she doesn’t have any impression from location tag for last post. She rarely gets impression from location (me either, we must not be doing it right lol). We almost never have any impression from explore either.
If you can use slaves / like exchange / engagement group to get lots of engagement within the first few minutes of posting you can test it.
Put in a few very uncompetitive hashtags - a few with less than 100 total hashtags - and see how high you rank there after the wave of engagement comes in.
