Shadowbanning comes with a reduction in both one’s Instagram reach and engagement, which is caused by an alteration in Instagram’s algorithm in many instances. Instagram’s Community Guidelines have proven to be sensitive to bigger volumes of content over a period of time.

Community Guidelines are essential to mandate and maintain the quality of the content and the user environment. Sometimes these guidelines might wrongly flag an account on incorrect grounds and thus impose a shadowban.

A shadowban can last well over a month, causing severe drops in reach and overall engagement leaving you with a hampered growth. If your content continues to gather underwhelming engagements, here’s how you can check if your account has been shadowbanned on Instagram.

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How to check if you’re Shadowbanned on Instagram?

A shadowbanned account’s hashtags won’t be searchable. In other words, your hashtags are shadowed. Your profile doesn’t show up when a user that doesn’t follow you searches for those hashtags.

By following the steps below you can manipulate this trick to check for a shadowban.

• Make a new post, using a hashtag that isn’t as popular.
• Search for the hashtag using another account. This profile however shouldn’t be following the account checking for shadowban.
• If your account is shadowbanned, your post won’t show up on the feed when the user searches for the hashtag.

Remember that in this case, the account used to demonstrate these steps is not shadowbanned, hence, the post is visible when searched for the corresponding hashtag.

The result should be consistent across any number of accounts that don’t follow you. Them not being able to see your post in their feed despite searching for the specific tag.

Also read: How to view full-size Instagram photos?

Can Shadowbans be avoided?

The use of automated apps and services is easily tracked by Instagram and also forbidden by its Terms of Service.

Showcasing a bot-like behaviour (driving up the number of comments, likes, and so on) is also suspicious behaviour and attract a shadowban.

There also exist some “banned” hashtags, whose legitimacy is entirely user-based. Steering clear of these traits could help one’s online presence avoid a shadowban.

Also read: How to fix Instagram not posting photos?