How Does Facebook Decide Which Posts to Show?

8 min read

Feeling frustrated with Facebook? We’re here to shed some light on the Facebook algorithm and how to work with it, not against it. More importantly, discussing the impact of the algorithm on your business and why you should start selling on Facebook with Ecwid E-commerce.

What Algorithm Changes Has Facebook Made Recently?

Over the years Facebook has made changes ultimately to better serve users. Here is a helpful timeline to see exactly how they’ve progressed.

Facebook Algorithm Timeline via Hootsuite

The two most impactful changes came in 2009 with the introduction of the algorithm. And again in 2018, when the concept of meaningful interactions was introduced. And posts that received positive interactions were prioritized by Facebook. With these changes, users and businesses saw their Facebook page post reach drop suddenly. And since then have tried to better understand the rules of the game.

Keep in mind that as you learn more about the algorithm, it never stops evolving. You’ll likely have to adapt your strategy but we’ll do our best to provide you with guidance and updates along the way. The best way to approach Facebook and these changes, look at what the algorithm prefers and build a strategy around that. And to do so, we first have to understand exactly how it works.

What Is the Facebook Algorithm?

Chances are you’ve seen your Facebook page post reach drop suddenly. This is in large part to the algorithm actually doing its job and curating content in the News Feed for users.

However, for businesses, you’ll want to focus on one keyword — ranking. What is this and how is it used in Facebook? There are four elements considered when the algorithm ranks posts:

the available inventory of stories.
the signals, or data points that can inform ranking decisions.
the predictions we make, including how likely we think you are to comment on a story, share with a friend, etc.
and a relevancy score for each story.

Overwhelmed? Facebook breaks it down in an easy to understand way:

Essentially for businesses, you’re going to have to work a little smarter and harder to stay infront of followers. As you begin to understand how the Facebook algorithm works, it’s helpful to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Think about the content you are about to publish, would you want to interact with it? Why or why not?

We’re ready to jump into some deeper questions that will hopefully give you some more tools to level up your social media game!

How Can I Bypass the Facebook Algorithm in 2022?

Now that we’ve established how the algorithm and ranking works, we want to give you tools to beat the Facebook algorithm. We’re going to stay away from strategies such as comment baiting or tag baiting. As these actions will actually hurt your efforts and Facebook has taken a strong stance against them.

You actually can’t “beat the algorithm” but what you can do is find tools that will help increase your reach and engagement. Here are a few ways you can work with the algorithm:

Create shareable posts (think viral lip-sync challenge that will generate organic reach caused by sharing)
Pay to boost well-performing organic posts
Encourage users to select “see first” for your posts.

Looking for more? Check out the blog post where we talk about a few ways to boost your Facebook organic reach and engagement!

Does Facebook Limit Post Reach?

By this point, you’re quite familiar with how the algorithm works. And likely it’s contributing to the decrease in engagements and reach. Now we want to show you how to check your organic reach on Facebook.

By keeping an eye on which organic posts are top-performing you’ll find what your audience is more likely to interact with. And thereby, working with the algorithm to hopefully increase your post reach.

In Facebook Manager, find the “More” dropdown menu and select “Insights”
And find “Posts” and navigate to the section “All Posts Published”
Here is where you’ll find the organic reach of your posts.

Here Facebook explains how they determine what posts are populated in the News Feed:

The downside to the algorithm is that Facebook may limit the reach of your post based on their ranking algorithm. You still might be wondering, “ but how can Facebook decide which posts to show?”

Here’s how: more specifically when a follower chooses not to interact with your post. Facebook strategically calculates that the user might want to see less of your content. And gives it a lower ranking score for future posts.

This is why it’s important to motivate users to interact with a positive engagement — a like, comment, or share. It can seem frustrating but it’s helpful to understand what the end goal is. By using the algorithm, Facebook curates your feed with posts and content that you actually want to see.

If you’re looking to beat the Facebook algorithm and how to increase post reach on Facebook page, we have a few ways to help!

What Does This Mean for My Business?

First, if your business is not on Facebook, you’ll want to get on that ASAP. Second, you’ll want to come up with a smart strategy to make sure your efforts are worth it. And for that, we’ve shared some thoughts on how to use Ecwid tools for Facebook sales.

And most importantly, we recommend using Ecwid E-commerce and Facebook to start selling on social. It provides you with another opportunity to expand the reach of your business to almost 2 billion users. If you’re ready, sign up for one of our plans and start social selling today.

Do you want to learn more about selling on Facebook?

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May 10, 2020

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.