Instagram has introduced quite a lot of changes lately. The latest one seems to be inspired by its biggest competitor, TikTok, and it’s not the first time. From now on, Instagram’s Search will look much more like the one on TikTok, offering you topics rather than just accounts and hashtags.
At the moment, when you search Instagram, you can choose which of the following you want to see: accounts, audio, tags, and places. Each of them has the search term you entered in their name. For example, if you enter “embroidery” in the Search bar, all the results will match the text you entered.
Other than the text you type, Instagram also uses two other “signals” to make your searches more relevant:
- Your activity. This includes accounts you follow, posts you’ve viewed, and how you’ve interacted with accounts in the past. We usually show accounts and hashtags you follow or visit higher than those you don’t.
- Information about the search results. When there are a lot of potential results, we also look at popularity signals. These include the number of clicks, likes, shares and follows for a particular account, hashtag or place.
However, if you don’t have a specific account, hashtag, sound or place in mind, you may not find everything that’s related to the topic you’re interested in. Well, Instagram is about to change that. “We are soon launching a series of improvements designed for inspiration and discovery,” Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri writes in a blog post. “These changes make Instagram Search more than just a way to find accounts and hashtags. We’re moving towards a full search results page experience that makes it even easier to go deep on your interests.”
In a video he published on Instagram, he shows you a little demo of the upcoming changes. It starts around 3:20 so you can see what search results will look in the future:
So, when you type “embroidery,” you’ll see photos and videos related to it instead of just accounts, hashtags, places, and audio that have this term in their name. For me personally, that sounds much more reasonable and useful. Not everyone who posts embroidery-related content has “embroidery” in their name nor uses hashtags. I believe this means that much more content will be discoverable, and you’ll have a higher potential of reaching wider audience. It may also mean spending more time on Instagram, but that’s a different topic.
Mosseri says that Instagram is expanding the keywords you can use to search for content. The company is currently focused on English, but support for other languages is also coming in the future. However, there’s still no confirmation when exactly this “future” will come, but we will update the article when we hear more.
via The Verge
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