I’m not shadowbanned – I checked through an account that is not connected and could see my posts (apart from one from 3 months ago) when I scrolled through recent.
However, they are ranking very low on unpopular hashtags where I have by far the most likes and engagement in these hashtags. I post once a week.
I think possible reasons could be:
- I used to pay for likes, now I don’t and comparing this engagement with previous IG reads it as low quality posts.
- Most of my comments come from an engagement group who are not following me
- I used the same hashtag in a few posts, although I don’t use the same one twice in a row.
Things that don’t seem to be a problem
- I’ve not been asked for EV or PV (from what I can see)
- I’ve not used any banned hashtags
- Account has never been disabled
- Post has never been deleted by insta
Any advice moving forward is much appreciated 
I did my weekly post yesterday - didn’t use like exchange or any comments groups so all real engagement.
Over 400 likes, 14 comments and I’m ranking 277th of 401 in a low competition hashtag (hashtag in caption not comments).
Do I need to get my engagement back up to as high as it was when it wasn’t real to rank normally?
Or is there a way out of this?
Within your EG are you following the main picture link? If that could be a reason why you’re hashtag reach is plummeting. Also it’s good practice to follow those within your EG and to daily interact with them.
Following link direct from Telegram in engagement group yes.
Is there no way out of this guys?
Or is it something I need to get to level 2 before I have access to the solution?
The timing of your post could be off too, try to find out when your followers are most active and post it at the peak time.
If you get much engagement in a short period of time, your post gets ranked higher