By Ilham Musyafa · December 21, 2024
The Facebook algorithm is not one formula. It is a set of machine learning systems that Meta runs separately for Feed (what most people still call the news feed), Reels, Stories, Groups and recommendations. For Feed, Meta says the system gathers every eligible post from the friends, Pages and groups you follow, narrows them to about 500, predicts how likely you are to interact with each one, and orders them by a relevance score. Everything a business page does helps or hurts those predictions. This guide walks through the process using Meta's own documentation, then spends extra time on the part most guides skip: posting links to your own website, getting the preview card right, and measuring the visits you actually get.
Every statement here about how Meta ranks content links to Meta's own pages, mostly the Transparency Center "system cards". Where Meta has not said something, I say so rather than repeat marketing folklore.
What is the news feed on Facebook?
The news feed is the scrolling list of posts you see when you open Facebook. Meta renamed it to just "Feed" in February 2022, saying the old name made people think it was a place for news stories rather than posts from friends (TechCrunch reported the change). "Facebook news feed", "facebook newsfeed" and "Feed" all mean the same thing.
In July 2022 Meta split the app in two. The first tab became Home, which Meta calls a "discovery engine", personalized by machine learning and mixing in Reels and Stories. The Feeds tab shows posts from friends, Favorites, Pages and groups newest first, with no "Suggested for you" posts (ads still appear). When people say "the Facebook algorithm", they almost always mean the ranking in Home.
If you have read about EdgeRank (affinity times weight times time decay), that describes Facebook from more than a decade ago. Meta now describes Feed as content "selected, ranked and delivered to you by an artificial intelligence (AI) system" built from several models whose inputs change often.
How the Facebook algorithm ranks Feed: the 4 steps
Meta's Feed system card (updated October 6, 2026) lays out four steps. Every practical tip later in this guide maps back to one of them.
- Gather inventory. The system collects eligible posts from your friends, the Pages you follow and the groups you joined. Posts that violate the Community Standards are removed.
- Leverage signals. A lightweight model selects "approximately 500 of the most relevant posts." Integrity processes also reduce the distribution of problematic content here.
- Make predictions. Heavier models estimate how you will react to each post: scroll past, comment, click "Interested", open it full screen, or click a link that leads off Facebook.
- Rank by relevance score. The roughly 500 posts are ordered by score. Meta also aims for "a balanced mix of content types", so you would not see several videos in a row.
The example signals are concrete: who created the post and your history with them, the format (photo, video, link), how many of your friends liked it, how quickly you scrolled past someone's posts recently, seconds spent on status updates in the past 14 days, and how often you watched a video for more than 30 seconds.
For a business page, this means your organic post only enters the Feed of your followers (unless the separate recommendation system picks it up), and there is no single score for it: each follower gets a different prediction based on their own history with your Page and that format.
Connected vs recommended content: why non-followers see your posts
The Feed system card covers only connected content, and says suggested content "is not powered by the AI we describe in this system card." Recommendations have their own Feed recommendations system card (updated June 24, 2026).
Its inventory is a subset of public content (photos, videos, links, reels, events, live video) from Pages and groups you do not follow. Signals include how you engaged with similar content, post type, video length, sharing history, group and Page activity, and time of day. Predictions include how long you will view the post, whether you will share it, privately or publicly, and whether you will click "X" to dismiss it.
The gate is stricter than for followers. Facebook's Recommendations Guidelines say some content allowed on Facebook is still not eligible to be recommended. For a normal business the relevant category is "low-quality publishing": content reused from other sources without significant changes, long captions unrelated to the main content, and coordinated comment networks. Pages that buy likes or repeatedly share ineligible content are generally not recommended at all.
How the algorithm differs on Feed, Reels, Stories and Groups
Meta publishes a system card per surface. The steps are similar; the inventory and predictions differ.
| Surface | Inventory | Predictions Meta names | For a Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed | Friends, followed Pages, joined groups | Scroll past, comment, link click, time on site | Your followers |
| Reels | Followed plus similar reels and accounts | Watch time, like, hide, see less | Can reach strangers |
| Stories | Stories from the last 24 hours | Watch, skip, reply, move on | Mostly people who know you |
| Groups | Joined plus suggested group posts | React, comment, hide, join | Helpful posts travel |
Feed
For link posts, the key line in the Feed card is that Meta predicts how likely you are to "click on a link that takes the user to a website outside of Facebook" and "how long the user will stay on that website." The link section below builds on that.
Reels
The Reels system card (updated June 19, 2026) is the most open to non-followers. Inventory includes reels from accounts you follow, reels similar to ones you engaged with, and reels from similar accounts, including some from Instagram. A lightweight model narrows the pool to roughly 10 to 100, then predicts "how long you're likely to watch a reel" and whether you will like it, hide it or ask to see less. One input is how many times other people watched the reel to completion. So the first seconds matter most: a reel that makes one point clearly in 20 seconds beats one that takes 30 seconds to start.
Stories
The Stories system card starts from "all relevant stories shared by people or Pages within the last 24 hours" and predicts viewing behavior: how many of an author's stories you will watch, whether you will move to the next author, and whether you will react or reply. Signals include how often you skipped or closed that author's stories. Stories suit updates and reminders for people who already know you more than discovery.
Groups
The Groups feed system card includes posts from groups you joined and groups you have not, narrowed to about 200 and ranked on predictions such as reacting, commenting, hiding, or joining the group. A genuinely helpful answer in a relevant group can reach people who would never follow your Page. A drive-by promotional link tends to get hidden, which is exactly what the system tries to predict.
The signals that matter most for business pages
Pulling the system cards together, these are the signals Meta names and what you can do about each.
| Signal Meta names | What it tells the system | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Past interactions with the author | This follower cares about your Page | Reply to comments |
| Comments and reactions | The post sparked a response | Ask a question customers can answer |
| Shares, including private | Worth sending to someone | Make posts useful enough to forward |
| Time spent, watch time | The post held attention | Lead with the point |
| Hide, "X", Show less | The post missed for this person | Drop formats your audience skips |
| Link clicks, time on site | The link led somewhere worth staying | Send people to a fast, relevant page |
What is not on the list matters too. These system cards do not name follower count, hashtags or posting frequency as ranking signals. Follower count matters only because it sets the size of your inventory audience.
What hurts your Facebook reach
Meta publishes what it demotes on its types of content we demote page. The list has shrunk: in July 2025 Meta removed fourteen guidelines, including ad farms, domains with limited original content and links to domains with high "click-gap", according to its change log. Older articles that list those as current penalties are out of date. What still applies to a normal business:
- Engagement bait. Posts that "explicitly request engagement" such as votes, shares, comments, tags, likes or reactions. "Comment YES if you agree" is the classic. A genuine question is not bait.
- Clickbait links. Posts that "lure people into clicking on an included link by creating misleading expectations": withholding information, "You won't believe...", excessive caps or exclamation marks.
- Unoriginal content. In July 2025 Meta said accounts that repeatedly reuse others' videos, photos or text without credit or meaningful changes get reduced distribution on everything they share (Meta for Creators). Stitching clips or adding a watermark does not count as a meaningful change.
- Low-quality landing pages. Meta's page on reducing problematic content (April 2025) lists "links to websites that are covered with ads, slow to load or broken." It predates the July 2025 cleanup, so read it as direction rather than a precise rule, but it matches the time-on-site prediction.
- Personal negative feedback. Every hide, snooze, unfollow and Show less lowers how that person's Feed ranks similar posts from you. That is personalization, not a penalty.
Is there a list of words to avoid on Facebook?
No. Meta has not published a list of banned or "trigger" words for organic reach, and its system cards do not mention keyword filtering. What it describes are patterns: clickbait phrasing and engagement bait. On hashtags, Meta's creators post above says captions with no more than five hashtags, few capital letters and no links performed best for original content. That is advice, not a ranking rule.
Do link posts get less reach? Posting links to your website
This is the question I get most from business owners, because the website is where the booking or sale happens.
What the algorithm sees in a link post
Meta has not published a rule that demotes link posts. The Feed card says format is a signal, that Feed balances content types, and that it predicts whether each person will click off Facebook and how long they will stay on the site. A link post is judged partly on what happens after the click. Meta's change log also notes that since December 2023, link posts shared at high frequency are no longer demoted.
One 2025 development to know: in December 2025 Meta confirmed to TechCrunch it was testing a limit on link posts for some Pages and professional-mode accounts without Meta Verified. Meta called it "a limited test", publishers were excluded, and links in comments were not affected. That is a posting cap, not a ranking penalty. If your Page suddenly cannot add links, this test is the likely reason.
So link posts are not scored to zero, but they are measured partly on the page you send people to. A slow page behind a cookie wall and a popup produces exactly the "click, leave in three seconds" pattern that prediction is built to notice.
Make the preview card work
When you paste a URL into a post, Facebook's crawler (facebookexternalhit/1.1) fetches the page and builds the card from its Open Graph tags. Meta's webmaster sharing guide lists them:
og:title: the article title, without your site name.og:description: a short summary, usually 2 to 4 sentences per Meta.og:image: the card image.og:url: the canonical URL, without tracking parameters.og:type: defaults towebsiteif missing.og:image:widthandog:image:height: so the image renders the first time the link is shared.
Without these tags, the crawler "uses internal heuristics to make a best guess", which is how cards end up showing a logo, a random photo or cookie banner text. Meta's sharing best practices recommend images at least 1080 pixels wide. Most sites use a wide image around 1.91:1, such as 1200 by 630, which fits the large card without cropping.
A good card does not change ranking directly, but it changes the click prediction for every person who sees the post, and clicks are a signal Meta names. Before I share a new page, I paste the URL into the link preview checker. It fetches the page from a server rather than my browser, shows the card for Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and X, lists missing Open Graph tags, and checks that the og:image loads and what its real pixel size is.
Compare that with a page that uses a site-wide default image. Nothing is broken, but every page shared from that section looks the same in Feed, which gives nobody a reason to click this one.
Two more things trip people up. Facebook caches the card: Meta says images are cached by URL, and the Sharing Debugger re-scrapes a page after you fix it. And a firewall or security plugin that answers facebookexternalhit with a challenge page produces an empty card. The Sharing Debugger uses Facebook's own crawler, so if your browser sees the tags but the debugger does not, check your firewall rules.
Measure the visits you get
Post insights show link clicks, but clicks are not visits: some people leave before the page loads, and reshares arrive mixed in. In Google Analytics 4, untagged Facebook traffic shows up as referrals from domains like facebook.com or l.facebook.com, grouped under Organic Social.
To see your own Page posts separately, tag the link. Google's URL builder help page says to always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, and warns that missing parameters show as "(not set)". For a Page post:
https://ilhammsf.com/blog/fix-temporary-processing-error-sitemap/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=page-post-2026-10&utm_content=sitemap-guideUse social as the medium. Google's default channel group rules put a session in Organic Social when the medium is one of "social", "social-network", "social-media", "sm", "social network" or "social media". Invent something like fb-post and those sessions can land in Unassigned. I build these in the UTM builder. Its Facebook / Meta Ads preset uses paid_social, which is right for ads but wrong for an organic post, so type facebook and social yourself. It also flags capitals and spaces, because GA4 keeps the case you send and "Facebook" and "facebook" become two rows.
In GA4, open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition and switch the dimension to Session campaign. Tagged posts get their own rows, separate from people sharing your link on their own. Compare engaged sessions and conversions, not just sessions: fewer visitors who book beat a viral post whose visitors leave in five seconds. Keep og:url on the clean canonical URL so likes and shares count toward one address, and never put UTM tags on your own internal links, because that overwrites the real source of the visit.
How to grow reach on a business page: a weekly routine
None of this needs tricks, just a routine that feeds the predictions Meta names.
- Review last week. Which posts got comments, shares and watch time, and which tagged links brought engaged visits in GA4? Do more of that.
- Plan a format mix. Feed balances content types, so plan one or two reels, a photo or carousel, one link post to a genuinely useful page, and stories on most days.
- Write the hook first. The first seconds of a reel and the first line of a text post decide whether people stay.
- Check every link. Preview the card, fix title and image, tag the URL, and make sure the page loads fast on a phone.
- Test posting times. Meta lists time of day as a recommendation signal but publishes no best time. Try a few slots for several weeks and compare.
- Reply to comments early. Your followers' interactions with your Page feed their future Feed predictions.
- Help in groups. Answer questions in relevant groups, and link to your site only when the page really answers the question.
Meta does not publish an ideal frequency either. Post as often as you can keep quality up, because a weak post that gets scrolled past teaches the system that your posts get scrolled past. If the page behind your links is the weak point, that is a website problem, not a Facebook problem; I cover the basics in digital marketing for small business.
How to reset or change your own Facebook feed
You cannot turn the Facebook algorithm off, but the Feed and recommendations system cards list controls that change what it shows you:
- Feeds tab: posts from friends, groups, Pages and Favorites newest first, without suggestions.
- Favorites: people and Pages you add rank higher and show newest first.
- Show more / Show less, Interested / Not interested: temporarily raise or lower that post and similar ones.
- Hide: removes a post and reduces similar content.
- Snooze and Unfollow: pause or stop posts from a person, Page or group.
- Search in the Feeds tab: finds content by search term instead of personalized ranking.
Frequently asked questions
How does the Facebook algorithm work in 2026?
According to Meta's Feed system card, it gathers posts from the friends, Pages and groups you follow, narrows them to about 500, predicts how you will interact with each, and ranks them by a relevance score. Posts from accounts you do not follow come from a separate recommendation system with stricter eligibility rules. Reels, Stories and Groups each run their own version.
Why are my Facebook page posts not reaching anyone?
Organic reach starts with your followers, and each follower's Feed is ranked on their own history with your Page. If people have been scrolling past or hiding your posts, predictions for the next one are lower. Check for engagement bait, reused content and weak link previews, then rebuild with formats your audience watches and comments on.
Does Facebook limit posts with external links?
Meta has not published a rule that demotes link posts, but it predicts whether people will click off Facebook and how long they stay on the site. In December 2025 Meta also tested a cap on link posts for some Pages and professional accounts without Meta Verified, calling it a limited test. Links in comments were not affected.
What is the best time to post on Facebook?
Meta lists time of day as a recommendation signal but does not publish a best time. Test a few slots for several weeks and compare engagement and website visits per slot. Your own audience data beats any generic chart.
Is there a list of words to avoid on Facebook?
No official list exists. Meta demotes patterns such as clickbait headlines that withhold information or say "You won't believe", and posts that explicitly ask for likes, shares or comments. Content that breaks the Community Standards is handled separately.
How is the Reels algorithm different from the news feed?
Feed mainly ranks posts from accounts you follow, while Reels draws from followed accounts plus similar reels and accounts, including some from Instagram. Reels ranking leans on predicted watch time, likes and hides, and completed views by other people are an input. That makes Reels the easiest format for reaching non-followers.
Can you turn off or reset the Facebook algorithm?
You cannot turn it off. You can use the Feeds tab to see posts newest first without suggestions, add Favorites, use Show more or Show less, and hide, snooze or unfollow accounts. Over time those actions change what Home shows you.
If the page you send Facebook traffic to is slow or does not convert, that is the part I fix: I build fast, hand-coded company profile websites and can audit the one you have. Get in touch and tell me what you are trying to sell.