The ability of Instagram users to search is getting an update. The organization has announced today that English-speaking users in six countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland and Canada, will be able to search the site using keywords. Before today, only hashtags or profiles may be scanned. So for example, if you'd previously tried to find "good recipes," you'd only be able to check for tagged #healthy recipes or accounts with variants on "healthy recipes" in their name or bio. Today, however, Instagram lets users check for keywords themselves, meaning posts that contain healthier recipes can appear even though the particular tag is absent.
However it's not clear how the service decides what the post is for. My quest for healthier recipes has yielded gluten-free and paleo-cookie recipes, for example, which is obviously not what everyone is hoping to discover when they're searching for healthy recipes.
The company's spokesperson notes that the team considers a variety of factors including the type of material, the captions, when it was uploaded and more specific results to the surface. It also uses machine learning to find the highest quality content that is important to you For now, only grid posts will appear.
This is a relatively significant improvement to the content of surfacing. Instagram has always been frustratingly limited to giving users the opportunity to find the posts they really want. Instagram notes, however, that those words would be searchable. The search is limited to subjects of general interest and keywords that fall under the Instagram Group Guidelines, said the spokesperson.
My keyword search is already live, and I can't search for "vaccines," "QAnon," or even "Trump" or "Biden." However I can search for "puppies," "pasta," or "flowers." There's certainly a small quest.
