Facebook has been making a lot of changes to their news feed algorithm. In the past, there used to be a chronological listing of stories as they were shared by your network. However, as the membership on the social media network continued to grow (more than a billion members) and the content continued to explode, Facebook decided to make some changes. The goal, per Facebook, of News Feed is to “deliver the right content to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them.”

To make this happen, Facebook currently considers thousands of factors to serve up stories from a publisher’s page in an individuals’ news feed. Some of these factors can be broken up into the following:

1. Relevance factors
2. Engagement factors
3. Quality factors
4. Profile factors
5. Recency factors

Relevance Factors:

• Is your audience interested in that topic?
• Has your audience engaged with that topic in the past?
• Have they hidden any content related to that topic in the past?

Engagement Factors:

• Positive and negative engagement affect where your post will rank on an individual’s news feed. More likes, comments, shares, reactions and clicks will result in higher positions on people’s news feeds.
• Negative engagement like hiding your post will result in your post dropping off from those people’s news feeds.
• Unexpected spikes in engagement which are not typical on your posts may also result in your post dropping in news feeds.

Quality Factors:

• Are you sharing good quality, authentic content with your network? This can be determined by how many people are hiding your posts, not spending enough time viewing your content, etc.

Profile Factors:

• Profile of content sharer
• What type of content do they normally share?
• How close of a connection is there between the content sharer and the consumer?
• Who are the fans of the business page?

Recency Factors:

• Is it a current trending topic?
• Are people engaging with that content piece currently?
• Some older posts may also get a higher spot in the news feeds if there is still engagement on that post and it is deemed relevant for an individual.

Are there any other ranking factors that you’ve noticed? Please don’t hesitate to share in the comments.