The exact formula that Facebook uses to calculate content visibility in news feed is unknown, but what is known is that the goal of news feed is “presenting users with interesting information,” as mentioned by Ruchi Sanghvi at the 2010 f8 conference. This said, the existence of certain elements within the algorithm have been mentioned by Facebook, while others have been speculated by third-party researchers.

• Affinity: The strength of the connection between poster and receiver. The more I interact with someone on Facebook, the more I’ll see what they post on Facebook.

• Time decay: The amount of time that has passed between something being posted and a potential viewer for that post accessing their news feed. (Facebook Insights currently has a When Your Fans Are Online feature within the Posts tab, which can help reveal ideal posting times.)

• Engagement: Posts that receive more engagement (e.g. likes, comments, shares, clicks), particularly from a user’s own friends, are more likely to be shown to that user.

• Post type: Different post types (e.g. status update, link, photo, video) achieve different average organic reach numbers, with status updates achieving the most average reach, and link posts achieving the least average reach. A post on the Edge Rank Checker blog discussed a 12/2/13 decrease to post type average reach numbers, which seem to hold true for pages under Response Marketing’s control as well.

• Negative feedback: The more that users hide or report a poster’s content, the more that Facebook will penalize the poster and post with decreased reach numbers.

• Gaming the news feed: A post on the Facebook blog hinted at penalties for posts attempting to “game news feed distribution (e.g., asking for people to like the content)

Important to note is that Facebook is constantly updating its news feed algorithm, much of which is documented on its Facebook for Business blog within the news feed category.