So you want to know if someone is stalking you on Instagram.
Instagram stalkers are typically defined as people who visits your profile without actually interacting with your posts.
In addition, stalkers are most likely not following you so they are hard to detect.
It’s important to know who your Instagram stalkers are because you might not want some of them spying on your profile.
Hence, this article guides you on how to know if someone is stalking you on Instagram so you won’t be left in the dark.
- How to know if someone is stalking you on Instagram
- What is the order of viewers on Instagram story?
- How does Instagram rank story viewers?
- How to see your stalkers from your Instagram story viewers
How to know if someone is stalking you on Instagram
To know if someone is stalking you on Instagram, simply post an Instagram story, wait for a couple of hours, then check the users who viewed your story. The people at the top of your viewer list on your stories are your stalkers and top viewers.
Alternatively, you can use an Instagram analytics app.
Checking who viewed your stories is a great way to find people that are stalking you on Instagram. You can also use an Instagram analytics app if you don’t mind paying for it.
Instagram stalkers are typically people that views your Instagram profile without liking or commenting on any of your posts, and are not following you.
So if you want to find out who stalks your Instagram, you need to keep these couple of factors in mind.
Read on to find out how the Instagram story algorithm works and how to use an Instagram analytics app to your advantage.
1. Check who viewed your Instagram story
The first method is to check who viewed your Instagram story.
Fundamentally, Instagram stories allow you to check people who are viewing your profile.
It’s the best way to check you can check stalkers who aren’t following you.
Post a story
First of all, you’ll have to post something to your story; be it a photo or a video.
By doing so, you can check people who are actively viewing/visiting your profile.
Check who viewed your story
After you posted a story, wait for a couple of hours to allow people to stream in.
Then, tap on your story and check who viewed it.
The goal is to find people who viewed your story but aren’t following you.
People who viewed your story but aren’t following you are either “passerbys” or stalkers.
“Passerbys” are people who have stumbled across your profile from other socials, the explore page or another person’s profile.
These people aren’t your stalkers because they’ll most likely visit your profile only once.
Those that are stalking you are the ones who consistently come back to your profile (more than once).
In order to find those those people, you’ll have to post stories on Instagram frequently.
If you’re only going to post one story, you won’t be able to discern between a random person and a stalker.
So, it’s highly recommended that you post once a day for a week to find out people that are actively stalking you.
What is the order of viewers on Instagram story?
To decipher the order of Instagram story views, you’ll need to understand how the algorithm works.
Instagram wants to display the most relevant people that viewed your stories.
Similarly, your stories are being showed to the most relevant people on their timeline.
The order of viewers is determined from two factors.
How much time someone spends watching at your stories, and how often they view it.
For example, immediately after you post a story on Instagram, the order of viewers starts of as chronological.
This means that the people that appear at the top of your list are the most recent viewers.
When there are enough people that viewed your stories, the algorithm will change the order of the list.
The order of your viewers from an Instagram story starts of as chronological. Once your story gets enough views, the order changes.
The algorithm usually comes into play after 50 people have viewed your story.
The question is, how does the order of story viewers change after 50 users have viewed it?
How does Instagram rank story viewers?
Instagram ranks story viewers based on the how often a user interacts with your stories.
The users at the top of your story viewers interact with your stories the most.
On the other hand, the users at the bottom of your story views watch your stories the least.
In the past, some Instagram code was leaked which looks like a part of the algorithm.
It determined how the viewers are sorted, which stories show up first on the timeline, and on the explore pages.
However, nobody knows whether the code is still relevant in the present.
But there are some tests done that determined the factors that affect the order of the listing.
Firstly, the people who interact with your stories and posts the most will be higher up on the listing (e.g. likes, comments).
People who frequently interact with your stories will be ranked higher on your viewer’s list.
Essentially, whoever who appears first on the viewer list of your stories tend to view your stories the most.
This is how you can determine the people who are interested in your content.
One reason why the list is important is because if you’re selling a product/service, you can check people who are interested in them.
Once you have this information, these are the people that you want to be reaching out to because you have a higher chance of getting a sale from them.
Secondly, how much time someone spends on your profile, how many times someone visits your profile and watches your stories plays a huge role in sorting the viewer list.
Typically, someone who visits your profile frequently will be higher on your viewer’s list. That being said, the people who are at the top of your viewer’s list are most likely your stalkers.
This is not only how many of your stories someone watches, but also how they are interacting with it.
There are many types of interactions, but not limited to, skipping your story (swiping left), exiting your story, tapping left (previous story), and tapping right (next story).
Lastly, your interaction with the person on Whatsapp and Facebook might be part of the algorithm.
At the end of the day, Instagram is monetized with advertisements. This means that the app will try to collect as much data from you as possible to display the most relevant ads.
How to see your stalkers from your Instagram story viewers
There are multiple tests done by people that determined how Instagram sorts your story views.
To begin with, Paige Thelen from Instagram’s technology communications team mentioned this:
From the quote above, Instagram stories are ordered based on how likely you’ll interact with it.
Now, let’s look into how Instagram story viewers are ordered.
There’s a thread on Reddit where some people have tested the algorithm. Here are the results:
The first person tried an experiment with a friend where he visited his profile daily for a week.
After a week, his friend posted a story on Instagram and after a while, he was at the top of the list.
People at the top of your story viewers frequently visit your profile. To a considerable extent, these people could be stalking you.
This means that the person at the top of your story viewers visits your profile the most.
Based on this experiment, if you happen to see someone at the top of your story viewer’s list who isn’t following you, that person could be stalking you.
Here’s another experiment done by another person.
This person used a secondary account to stalk his main account.
He used the secondary account to watch his main account’s stories several times.
After 3 days, the secondary account jumped to the top of the viewers list on his main account’s stories.
Again, this proves that the people at the top of your viewer list are your stalkers/top viewers.
The people at the top of your viewer list on your stories are your stalkers and top viewers.
2. Use an Instagram analytics app
The second way you can use to check your stalkers is to use an Instagram analytics app.
You can easily check your stalkers within the app itself.
However, most of these apps are using the freemium model which means that you have to pay to check your stalkers.
If you’re willing to pay, going with an analytics app is a good idea because most of them are quite accurate.
As most of these apps contain paid features, you’re better off finding your Instagram stalkers by posting stories frequently using the previous method.
Conclusion
In this article, you’ve learnt how to know if someone if stalking you on Instagram, how to find and see them.
Here is a quick recap of everything:
1. You can see who stalks your Instagram by posting a story or using an app.
2. The people that are at the top of your viewer list on your story are your stalkers/top viewers.
3. Typically, someone who visits your profile frequently will be higher on your viewer list.
Now that you know the order of your story viewers, you can use it to your advantage to find out who’s stalking you on Instagram.
Related articles
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How To Know If You Are Shadowbanned On Instagram
How to Unfollow Users on Instagram Who Don’t Follow You Back
Author: Lim How Wei is the founder of Followchain. Feel free to follow him on Instagram.
