This New Instagram Shadowban Tester Examines Your Last 10 Posts

Instagram has been accused of “shadowbanning” users and posts starting about a year ago, preventing tagged content from properly appearing in searches for those tags. After photographers and others complained last year, someone made a tool for checking to see if you’ve been shadowbanned. Now there’s a new and improved one: Triberr’s Instagram Shadowban Test.

Triberr, a company that develops a content marketing automation suite, created the tool to provide Instagram users with a more comprehensive look at whether their photos and posts are showing up correctly for other Instagram users.

While the original tester has seemingly been neglected — the username search no longer functions — Triberr’s version will be maintained by the company’s team of developers.

Instead of just looking up the visibility of an account’s most recent post, Triberr’s checker checks the last 10 posts, verifying that the post does indeed appear in the search results for each hashtag.

“The shadowban applies to individual posts and may occur for various reasons,” Triberr writes. “For example, overuse of a hashtag or a banned hashtag can trigger this occurrence. Therefore, we provide an analysis of your latest 10 posts so that you can easily identify culprits in your posts.”

If a hashtag is found to contain the photo, it shows up as green in the results. If a hashtag was not found associated with the photo, it shows up as red and the post failed the test (i.e. it was shadowbanned).

To avoid getting shadowbanned, make sure you’re posting high-quality content, not buying followers, avoiding bot programs, and not spamming your posts with hashtags. If you find that you’ve already been shadowbanned, here are some things Triberr suggests you try:

Delete hashtags from the shadowbanned post(s). Avoid the use of too many hashtags, repetitive hashtag sets, or banned hashtags.
Disconnect third-party apps that may have resulted in the shadowban, especially bots or automation software that violate Instagram’s terms of service.
Correct any post images or captions, or remove anything that can be perceived as spam or flagged by others.
Refrain from any Instagram activity for the next 2 – 3 days. This includes posting, commenting, and liking. Just take a break and go outside!

Triberr’s tool also shows you at a glance how much reach each of the posts had in terms of likes and comments. And to see how much reach your account typically has, Triberr has also created an Instagram Engagement Calculator, which calculates the percentage of an account’s followers that engage with content based on the last 10 posts.