Instagram

What's tracked#

Add an Instagram account to any creator and Trackagoat tracks its Reels and posts the same way it tracks TikTok:

• Views (plays on Reels), likes, and comments per post
• Follower count and posting cadence for the account
• Automatic discovery of new posts about twice a day, like TikTok, with stats re-checked by post age on a schedule that slows down sooner than TikTok's (update schedule)
• Comments, with sentiment and signals, on paid plans (Comment Insights): the newest comments (up to 15) with every stats check, and up to 100 of the most-liked comments once a post is a day old and has more than that

Reels are identified automatically and flagged as short-form; feed image posts and carousels are tracked as photo posts.

Adding an Instagram account#

On a creator, click Add account and paste either:

• A profile URL: https://www.instagram.com/username/
• A handle: @username or username

To track a specific post, paste its URL on the Videos page:

• Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/{shortcode}/
• Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/{shortcode}/

Caveats#

Instagram is stricter than TikTok about what it exposes publicly, so a few things differ:

• Hidden likes. When an account hides its like counts, Trackagoat keeps the last known value rather than showing zero.
• No view counts on image posts. Instagram doesn't expose play counts for non-video posts, so those show 0 views.
• No share/save counts. Instagram doesn't surface these publicly.
• No comment replies. We collect top-level comments only. Instagram's comment count includes replies, so the number of comments collected for a post usually stays a little below it.
• Tracking Inbox view counts update once a day while the post is under 30 days old. Include a post to keep its views updating after that.
• Private accounts can be added, but their posts can't be discovered or tracked until the account is public. They carry a Private badge so you can tell them apart from a creator who stopped posting.
• Collab posts count for every tracked account whose profile they appear on, whichever account published them.
• Hashtags must be in the caption. Hashtag tracking mode reads the caption only, so a creator who puts hashtags in the first comment won't match. Use Selective mode for those accounts.
• Handles must match exactly. An account that doesn't exist on Instagram (a typo, or a renamed profile) is flagged unreachable after a few attempts and you're notified.
• Embeds. Instagram posts link out to Instagram rather than embedding inline (Instagram's embed is login-gated and unreliable).

Related#

• Creators and accounts
• Data freshness and scraping