Facebook Updates Its Video Ranking Algorithm
Facebook has announced that they are making some dramatic changes to their video ranking algorithm. Most importantly, Facebook is now keeping track of how long users watch videos and will promote videos with more watches and longer viewing times to other users.
Secondly, those users who tend to watch videos that appear in their News Feed will now be shown more videos in their Feed, while those users who tend not to watch videos will be shown fewer.
Facebook says this applies to videos uploaded directly to Facebook, and not to links to external video sites, for which Facebook says they already use similar metrics when considering ranking.
These changes mean you can improve your own video rankings in a few ways:
- Upload your videos directly to Facebook. Don't link to your video hosted on an external video site such as YouTube.
- Ensure your videos get early likes and watches that continue through to the end. Facebook considers both that video playback was started and how long a particular video was played. So when sharing your video be sure to keep it short and give people a reason to play it all the way through.
