How the Facebook Algorithm Works in 2026
Native, conversation-led Reels are the most reliable reach driver on Facebook this year. Native means you filmed it and uploaded it to Facebook yourself. Conversation-led means people talk under it, to you and to each other, and send it on to friends. That is where everything Meta has published about ranking in 2026 points. The sources are linked below so you can read them yourself.
What Facebook is doing when it picks posts
Meta has put out a separate write-up for Feed, for Reels, for video, for Groups, and even for which comments show first under a post. It calls them system cards. Same basic loop in all of them. Look at a post, guess what you would do with it, give it a score, sort. For Feed that is about 500 posts each time you open the app.
Native first, because that one changed the most
Meta has been going after reposted video since July 2025. Back then it said duplicate copies of a video would get less distribution so the person who made it gets the views, and that it had already hit around 500,000 accounts for spammy behaviour in the first half of the year.
Then on March 13, 2026 Meta posted Rewarding Original Creators on Facebook, and that is the one to read. If you or your Page shot it, it is original. If you took someone else's video and reacted to it, re-uploaded it or changed a couple of small things, it is not.
Unoriginal posts get pushed down in Feed and Reels. Keep posting mostly that and the account can stop being recommended at all, and lose monetization. Meta also says views and time spent on original Reels about doubled in the second half of 2025 against the same months of 2024.
So film it yourself. A TikTok with the watermark still on is the obvious one to stop posting. Compilations too. If you use someone else's clip, be on camera and add something to it.
Why the comments matter more than the likes
The Feed card lists what Facebook is trying to predict. A lot of it is comments. Whether you will comment on a post. Whether your friends will comment on it if you share it. Whether it will start a back-and-forth. Facebook also asks some people if a post was "worth your time" and learns from the answers.
A like sits near the bottom of that. A comment that gets a reply, or a share into a group chat, is the thing the system is built to find.
In practice a conversation-led Reel ends on something people can answer in a few words. An opinion people will disagree with works. So does asking for advice or a recommendation, and Meta says it trains its systems not to demote those. Then answer the early comments yourself. Each reply gives the person a reason to come back and reply again, and that thread is what gets measured.
Do not ask for it outright. Meta's engagement bait rules demote posts that tell people to comment a set word or emoji, tag friends, share the post or vote with reactions. The question has to be one people would want to answer anyway.
Why Reels get the reach
Meta tells investors where its growth comes from. On the Q2 2026 earnings call in July it said Facebook video time was up 9% year over year worldwide, and over 10% in the US and Canada, "where it was driven by ranking improvements." When the ranking team gets credit for video time, video is what gets pushed.
Reels also go to people who do not follow you. A text post from a Page mostly goes to its followers. A Reel can be in front of strangers the day you post it, and that is where new followers come from.
How a Reel gets judged changed in January. Meta's engineers wrote up a new layer in Reels ranking. A small random group of viewers is asked, "To what extent does this video match your interests?" on a 1 to 5 scale, and the answers train a model that sits on top of the main one. In a test on more than 10 million users, high ratings went up 5.4% and low ratings went down 6.84%. Meta says it got more "high-quality, niche content" delivered and fewer "generic popularity based recommendations."
Put simply, a Reel that picks up lazy views from people who do not care has a harder time now. A Reel made for one crowd, which that crowd watches to the end and talks about, has an easier one. The Reels card backs this up. It looks at how often people watched a Reel all the way through, how many views it has, what you have liked, shared or commented on lately, and who posted it.
What to do with links
Links are a weak way to reach people on Facebook right now. In December 2025 Meta started testing a cap of two organic link posts a month for Pages and professional-mode profiles that do not pay for Meta Verified. Meta called it a limited test, and news publishers were left out of it. Links in comments were not capped.
Even without a cap, a link post sends people off Facebook and a Reel keeps them there. If you need to send traffic somewhere, post the Reel and put the link in the first comment.
Does follower count still matter?
Less than it did. Both the Feed and Reels cards list who made the post as a signal, and Feed looks at how you have dealt with a Page before. Your followers are the first to see a new post too, so a Page whose followers engage starts ahead.
A Reel shown to non-followers is judged on the Reel, though. With the survey layer in place, how well it fits the viewer's interests counts for a lot, and a big follower number does not change that. Viewers can also tune their own feed now. Meta launched Shape Your Feed on Facebook this year and reported over 80% retention among people who use it.
What to do this week
Post Reels you filmed yourself, aimed at one clear group of people. Get to the point in the first seconds, since watching to the end is one of the things the Reels card looks at. End on a real question. Reply to comments for the first hour or so. Put any link in a comment. Stop posting anything with another app's watermark on it.
Then check your own numbers. In Meta Business Suite, sort your Reels by comments and shares rather than views, and make more of whatever is at the top.