How to identify fake followers on instagram

Fake Instagram Followers - How to Spot Them| Influencer Matchmaker

When assessing the value of working with a social media influencer, it can be all too easy to get caught up in numbers alone. The follower count an influencer has across various social channels can most definitely provide clues as to their online reach, but numbers aren’t the only consideration to take into account.

Influencer marketing can yield incredible results, and both businesses and influencers have been keen to make use of it. Unfortunately, this has also led to the emergence of would-be influencers who use a fake online following to get in on the action.

Photo and video-sharing platform Instagram is just one of the social networks most affected by these fake accounts. With this in mind, we weigh in on the rise of fake Instagram followers.

Where Do Fake Instagram Followers Come From?

The nature of the internet means things cannot always be taken at face value. Recent cases of Instagram hacking - which involves maliciously taking over a person's Instagram account - stand testament to that. Social media followers are another prime example of this, as the number of followers you have can have a significant impact on the perceived influence of your account.

As a result, some people will focus their efforts on buying followers in order to maximise their account’s earning potential. This following might in part be composed of real people, but they usually consist of fake accounts that have been created by so-called bots.

The problems posed by fake followers are significant enough for Instagram to have cracked down on these accounts back in 2017. This decision led to the closure of Instagress, a paid service which enabled users to expand their number of followers through automatically liking and commenting on photos.

The benefits of doing so seem clear; by minimising the number of fake accounts active on the platform, influencers and brands alike can shift the focus away from sheer numbers and instead opt for a following characterised by its authenticity and level of engagement.

How to Spot Fake Instagram Followers

Although fake Instagram followers might not always display the same warning signs, there are a number of signs to look out for when attempting to establish whether or not an account is fake. These include:

A significantly unbalanced ratio between the number of followers and the number of accounts followed. If the number of accounts they follow vastly outweighs their own followers, it’s likely the profile isn’t genuine.
Very limited profile information.
The account has little to no posts of their own.
An unusually low or high engagement rate.
Generic comments and posts. The account has little to no posts of their own. An unusually low or high engagement rate. Generic comments and posts.

The above list is by no means exhaustive, and an account that displays the above characteristics may not always be fake. Having said that, brands looking to create successful influencer marketing campaigns will need to focus all their efforts on collaborating with an influencer with a genuine online reach.

The Value of Genuine Followers

The growing role of influencers in the world of digital marketing is largely dependent on their ability to provide engagement with a given campaign. For this reason, assessing an account’s engagement rate often helps digital marketers to better understand the potential reach of a given influencer.

In order for a brand campaign to be successful, the influencer’s followers won’t just need to see the campaign, they should ideally also be inspired to engage with it. At the end of the day, engagement will play a crucial role in determining the campaign’s success, as brands will be eager to connect with an audience that shows a genuine interest in their products or services.

This is not to say that other considerations aren’t also important – the size, interests and demographic of an influencer’s audience, as well as the objectives of the campaign, will all play a role in determining whether or not a potential collaboration would be beneficial to both parties. For that reason, the decision to collaborate will often be made with a combination of factors in mind.

The Way Forward

With social media platforms such as Instagram attempting to address the issue of fake followers, brands of all shapes and sizes are likely to benefit from the result. Instagram itself famously removed millions of fake accounts back in 2014, with other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter following suit.

At the beginning of 2018, Instagram announced it would make several changes to its Application Program Interface (API), a system which determines the way in which apps interact with the platform. These changes are expected to go a long way in tackling fake followers. Amongst other things, the updates will prevent fake influencers from automatically following accounts and liking/commenting on posts.

With the fight against fake followers gaining more and more momentum, the power of genuine influencers looks set to further take hold of the digital marketing landscape in the years to come.

If you’d like to tap into the power of influencers for your brand marketing campaign, contact Influencer Matchmaker today via email at [email protected]. Alternatively, call a member of our dedicated team on 0203 9580 427.

3 Ways to Check if Your Brand Influencer Has Fake Followers

Working with brand influencers is an excellent way for a brand to expand its audience, develop social proof, and create user-generated content. However, brands need to carefully vet their influencers before initiating a partnership. One important thing that brands should look out for is fake followers — here's how you can conduct a fake follower check.

Instagram and TikTok influencers are powerful due to their large number of followers and the trust their followers have in their opinions. In today's day and age, it's not unusual to have hundreds of thousands of followers.

It may surprise you that this scale of following is so common, but brands should be aware that there are ways to buy fake followers or to get fake followers for free. Some of these social media users access fake followers to boost their follower count and to appeal more influential than they actually are.

For those brands that work with influencers, checking for fake followers is critical when choosing an Instagram or TikTok influencer to partner with your brand.

1. Check Out Their Followers

Before reaching out to a potential brand influencer, look through their account to see if they have fake followers. It's easier to figure out when your influencer is being followed by fake profiles than you think. Here's what you need to know:

Look for these red flags:

Followers with No Photos or Posts: If an influencer is followed by users that have not posted and/or lack a profile picture, you can typically assume that these followers are fake. Brands should also look out for influencers with followings of tons of private accounts and “spammy” usernames.
Irrelevant and/or Spam Comments: If an influencer has a ton of comments, it’s easy to assume that their followers are active. Look through a few photos and scan the comments. If the comments are clearly irrelevant or gibberish, they’re from fake followers.
Following/Followed by “fan-buying” services: If you look through their followers and who they’re following, you might see one or two fan-buying accounts. These are huge red flags that the influencer is gaining fake Instagram followers.

2. Check Follower Engagement

If an account has thousands of followers, it can be expected that their engagement rates are proportional. Brands can figure this out by comparing the number of followers to the number of likes and number of comments. Instagram or TikTok accounts with many followers and very low engagement rates likely have a bunch of fake followers. Calculate engagement rates for an account by dividing the total number of likes and comments by the total number of followers.

Use these numbers as a benchmark for checking follower engagement. Take the user’s last 10 photos and average the total number of comments and likes, then divide by the number of followers and multiply by 10 to get the average engagement rate. Even if the engagement checks out, make sure you look through their followers and comments to confirm that the account hasn’t purchased these likes and comments from fake followers.

3. Use an Automated Tool

If searching through TikTok or Instagram followers and comparing engagement rates manually isn’t the right fit, there are some tools available to help determine whether an influencer’s followers are fake.

FakeCheck scans a profile and determines the number of fake followers versus real ones. The tool also names the most suspicious followers. FollowerCheck is a free tool that provides a snapshot of an account’s followers. It can even be helpful for legitimate accounts. If a legitimate account realizes several fake followers have latched on to their account, they can go in and block/remove those users. FollowerCheck works best on accounts with a larger number of followers, and it isn’t 100% accurate, but it can give a big picture view of an account’s follower breakdown.

Social Audit Pro is a paid service that provides follower analytics for Instagram accounts. The platform does a full audit of a profile’s followers that includes useful analytics. There are different paid levels depending on how large an account is – ranging from $5 for accounts with 5,000 followers to $20 for accounts with 20,000 followers. The payments are a one-time fee and are reasonable even for brands with small budgets.

Conclusion

Many Instagram users have found that padding their followings with paid accounts can help them earn money as an influencer. However, this clearly undermines their authenticity and influence. Manually checking followers for spam accounts and comments is a quick way to find out if the comments and likes are from real or fake followers. Some legitimate accounts may be followed by spam accounts or fan-buying services, but if a potential influencer has massive amounts of fake followers, brands should pass on that partnership.

Checking Instagram for cheating so as not to drain the budget for bots

If you are going to buy advertising from a blogger, you should not trust only the statistics that he will show. The author can be dishonest and tweak his performance, so it is important to check him for cheating.

What kind of cheating is and why is it needed

Cheating is an artificial increase in page performance. On Instagram*, the price of posting depends on the statistics of the blog: the larger and more active the audience, the higher the price. Therefore, unscrupulous authors increase the number of likes, comments, reach and subscribers in order to sell ads more expensively.

Because of this, instead of real people who could become buyers or future subscribers, most of the ads are "viewed" by bots. The advertiser does not get the promised results, advertising does not work well, the budget goes nowhere.

In order not to get into this situation, you need to check the statistics of the blog. There are simple and cheap ways to cheat, which can be seen when you carefully view your account, but there are more complex and tricky ones, which will require special services to find.

In this article, we will analyze simple and complex methods of cheating, and also show you how to analyze a page in order to find a would-be blogger. Let's start with simple and free ways, and then move on to more complex ones.

Look at the likes and comments of subscribers

The easiest way to identify unscrupulous bloggers is by analyzing reactions. Often, for this, it is enough to carefully look at the account and evaluate the quality and number of reactions, their relationship with each other and with the number of subscribers.

How to check the number of likes on Instagram*

Open any post, click on the list of likes and view accounts. If among them there are many profiles with strange nicknames, without an avatar and publications, these are bots. So, the likes are screwed up, and in the cheapest way.

Typical bot accounts: random nicknames and empty profiles

There are also premium bots that have posts, a description and an avatar. But they are also easy to calculate, because all posts are loaded in 1-2 days, and there are much more subscriptions than subscribers.

A classic example of a premium bot: a random set of pictures in posts, no actual one, more than 7 thousand followers

Bot creators often copy personal photos of Instagram users* to make the bot look as natural as possible, or simply hack profiles using them as bots. Such pages look real because there are real photos of people and activity on the page, but they are almost always given out by hundreds and thousands of outgoing subscriptions.

How to find comments from bots

Bots are not able to meaningfully write texts that fit the topic of the post, so their comments are immediately noticeable: neutral emoji or abstract words: beautiful, good shot, great, interesting thought.

An example of a post from a fake blog: emoji instead of text, the authors of such comments have thousands of subscriptions and half-empty profiles

How to identify comments from activity chats publications. We wrote more about this in the guide to activity chats. Usually in such chats, you need to be active on someone's page in order to get reactions on your own.

Participation rules for one of the activity chats

And everything seems to be fine, the author gets reactions from real users, but there is a problem - this is an uninterested audience. Users are not subscribed to the blogger, they are not interested in the content, they are not involved and do not trust him. So advertising in such blogs is unlikely to be successful.

It is difficult to calculate the cheat rate from chats, but it is possible. Usually such comments are written for show, as if for decency. You know how children respond to granny's cards on Whatsapp, or how some employees comment on the boss's post. The text is impersonal, without details, there is no real interest and involvement.

Below is an example from a post that was dropped into the activity chat. Rate the text of the comments.

The texts are almost the same, they seem to be on the topic of the post, but they are written more for show, without real interest. For example: where to buy such a suit? oh what a costume! I want the same suit! Yes, real subscribers can write like this. Therefore, look through the comments on different posts, look for suspicious similarities and impersonalities.

Below is another example from the chat: the comment text is very abstract and would fit almost any topic. It is clear that the author does not even bother with the text, if you see something like this under the posts, immediately beware.
It is not even immediately clear whether the commentator is mocking or really enthusiastic
Compare the number of reactions

It often happens that a blogger winds up one indicator and forgets about another. In this case, you can simply look at the post statistics to check Instagram* for cheating for free.

There are a lot more likes than comments

Look at the number of reactions on average. It is believed that there are about 2-3 times more likes than comments, and for large pages, the result is quite normal - 1 comment per 100 likes.

If there is nothing in the content that could cause a flurry of likes, but there are 4-5 times more likes than comments, this may be cheating. However, if you're analyzing impersonal ideation pages, this can be the case - they usually have a lot of likes and saves, but almost no comments.

The same number of reactions on different posts

It does not happen that the audience reacts to all posts in the same way. The number of reactions depends on many factors: the format of the post, the type of content, the length of the text, and so on. So scroll through the feed and look at the number of reactions on average. If plus or minus is the same everywhere, most likely, the blogger winds them up to the required amount.

Below is an example of the author, whose statistics show how reactions to posts can vary: a successful rils scored 74 thousand likes, not soaring - 1,600 and 800 each, a post with a cake about important events received 4.5 thousand reactions.
Lina Terentyeva's blog statistics
Evaluate the engagement of subscribers

The level of engagement shows how actively subscribers react to the content: they click on the "Like" button, write comments, bookmark posts, click on stickers, put reactions in stories.

How to calculate the engagement rate: ER coefficient

You can estimate the level manually by looking at the post statistics. For example, if an influencer has 10,000 subscribers and posts get 50 reactions on average, then fraud is obvious - there are only bots and only a few real users in subscribers.

You can more accurately assess engagement through services that analyze the Engagement Rate or ER. This ratio shows how many reactions per post, on average, in relation to the total number of subscribers.

ER calculation formula: average number of reactions per post / number of followers × 100

You can view ER in special social network analysis services, for example, in DataFan. The service allows you to receive dynamic reports and analyze your own accounts on Instagram*, VKontakte, Facebook*, Odnoklassniki, as well as VK, myTarget, Facebook* Ads campaigns.

Read more about DataFan and other Instagram* account analysis services in the article “How to analyze an Instagram* account”.

What should be the ER

ER depends on the volume of the audience: the more subscribers, the lower the ratio. A small profile that is followed by friends and acquaintances will have a much higher number of reactions in relation to the number of subscribers than a millionaire blogger.

There are no exact criteria for ER, because a lot depends on the niche and content. Let's compare two accounts with the same number of subscribers: one has short and funny videos, and the other has expert content for learning English. Statistics will show that funny videos have more reactions than useful videos about English. Accordingly, ER will be different even with the same audience size.

Blogger analysts from trendHERO recommend focusing on the following indicators:

ER less than 1% - very poor engagement, it is better not to consider buying ads;

ER from 1 to 3.5% - the average level of engagement, especially if the audience is very large;

ER from 3.6 to 6% - a high rate, more common among large and medium-sized bloggers;

ER over 6% - a very high level, usually for medium and small accounts.

To clarify that these figures refer to the analysis of blogs, commercial accounts often have ER below 1%. A store or a dental clinic sometimes does not even have the task of engaging subscribers and increasing ER.

We have already found out that all content cannot be equally interesting to the audience. This means that ER cannot always be the same either. Typically, the engagement rate for good authors ranges from 1 to 2%. If the ER schedule does not change or grows steadily, it looks like cheating.
Data from the DataFan service: normal account statistics - ER varies within 2%
Also, ER can vary depending on the frequency of publications. For example, if earlier there were 2-3 posts per week, and then it became 7, then in comparison with the previous period, ER will decrease. This happens because the indicator directly depends on the number of publications.

In addition, big drops can be due to the lack of content these days, and if ER has fallen and is not increasing, most likely a shadowban. Outbursts occur when a hype topic is discussed or reactions are added.

View account statistics in dynamics

Now let's see how to check a blogger for promotion on Instagram* using analytics services. Services are needed because the social network does not show account statistics as openly as the number of likes and comments.

Reach and views

For active influencers who consistently keep stories and publish posts, reach and views stay at about the same level with little fluctuation. You can learn more about social media reach in our article What Makes Up Social Media Reach.
Data from the DataFan service: coverage and profile views are approximately the same, there are slight fluctuations
But if there are sharp jumps and dips on the chart, this is suspicious. You need to check the content that was released these days. High jumps can mean:

advertising promotion;

hit in recommendations;

announcement and results of giveaways, promotions and sweepstakes;

artificially increased indicators.

DataFan data: Suspicious spikes in reach
To understand whether there was a cheat, you need to look at the content that was released during the burst days: maybe there was a topic that was hype or important for the audience. Check the posts: what they wrote, who liked it, it looks like real involvement or cheating bots. You can also ask the blogger for story statistics.

Also look at the ratio of reactions and reach/views. If there are hundreds of thousands of views, and only tens of reactions, this can be a winding up of indicators. This is how novice scammers often pierce: they increase coverage, but forget about reactions.

It happens that a blogger announces a giveaway or a giveaway, so the post gets a frenzied reach and a lot of reactions. After the giveaway ends, the author removes the description text, and the post looks unremarkable. However, if you go into the comments, you can find a lot of interesting things.
Sergey launched the draw and deleted the description text after completion, but the comments remained
Subscriptions and subscribers

When analyzing subscriptions, you need to look at the chart: if it grows smoothly upwards without sharp surges and falls, everything is in order. The blogger grows organically thanks to interesting content and engagement of subscribers.
Data from the DataFan service: an example of smooth growth, new people subscribe every day, there are no sharp changes cheating through pay-per-action services - the subscriber receives a reward for subscribing and immediately unsubscribes. Either hype or deceived expectations - the blogger spins ads on a hot topic, which he rarely writes about. People subscribe, and after a while they unsubscribe disappointedly.
On the chart of wave : first, the number of subscribers grows, and then decreases. Most likely, there was a giveaway or a raffle - they were attracted by subscription prizes, users subscribed, and after the giveaway they unsubscribed. There may also be hype or incorrectly chosen advertising.

Chart with sharp rises with almost no fall - almost always it is a cheat. Within a few days they buy bots, which then do not unsubscribe. It is also possible that a VERY successful advertisement or getting into recommendations - users subscribed and stayed. But this happens extremely rarely, usually in this case the growth is smooth.
Data from the trendHERO service: the chart shows that bots have been purchased in the last few months
Also worth a look outgoing subscriptions . If there are more of them than subscribers, the blogger uses mass following: he subscribes to the accounts of the target audience in the hope that users will notice him, go to the page and subscribe.

This process can be automated for little money, which is why many people are still doing it this way. However, it is dangerous to mass follow because Instagram* bans for such promotion methods.
Classic mass follower: there are many more subscriptions than subscribers
When mass following is not visible, you can look at the statistics of outgoing subscriptions in the trendHERO service. If the schedule is uneven and there are constant ups and downs, this is mass following. The account automatically subscribes to 50-100 users and unsubscribes after a while.

Audience data

If the page is in Russian, and the subscribers have accounts from Arab or Far Eastern countries, these are bots. But if you analyze the profile of a model or celebrity that is popular in these countries, then everything can be.

It's normal if a Russian-speaking author has a lot of subscribers from the CIS, but it's strange when most of the audience is from countries where they don't speak much Russian. However, if you are analyzing the profile of a polyglot who blogs in several languages, then the statistics should be just that.
Data from the DataFan service: statistics of a Russian-speaking author who has a suspiciously large number of subscribers from Asia
You can also compare the statistics of the audience that puts reactions with the statistics of subscribers. If the subscribers are mainly from Russia, but the likes are from the Arab countries, the likes are boosted.

The speed of collecting likes

Usually, likes are gradually gained in the first three days: the first 6–8 hours is a smooth and basic set of reactions, and the rest of the time the speed decreases. If in the first few hours the post gains 10 thousand likes, and then 500-1000 likes - cheating.

If a post after a day begins to sharply gain reactions - cheating. Even if the post was recommended, reposted by a very large account, or had an ad, the set of reactions should be gradual.

Well, the most obvious sign of fraud - over time, likes become less. If you see this, it means that the Instagram* algorithm has recognized fraud and cancels the actions of bots.

You can check the speed of getting likes through the trendHERO service or for free: wait for a new post and check the number of reactions every 2-3 hours.

Let's summarize: how to check a page on Instagram* for cheating

It is important to understand that all metrics need to be evaluated in relation to each other, taking into account the niche, content and audience. As we have already found out, what looks like cheating for one blogger is normal for another.

But there are obvious markers of cheating and gray methods of promotion:

there are many empty profiles among the audience with a strange set of characters in the nickname;

many comments with emoji or abstract expressions: nice, nice, have a nice day everyone, interesting thought, great;

many outgoing subscriptions, often there are even more subscriptions than subscribers;

views and reach are much more than reactions;

reactions are very few in relation to the number of subscribers;

involvement (ER) less than 1%;

content is in Russian, and the audience is not from Russian-speaking countries.

Be vigilant when buying advertising, and good payback!

How to recognize bots in your Instagram account and remove them - Travelpayouts Blog

Why is it important to regularly clean your profile from bots and spammers among subscribers?

Many novice Instagram users do not pay attention to bots in their followers, or even promote their account by attracting bots.
It would seem, but what is it? After all, with a large number of subscribers, the account looks more solid. And who would guess that most of them are bots and spammers, no one will rummage through thousands of subscribers, checking everyone.

This is an erroneous opinion, which very often ruins accounts that begin their lives.

With the current Instagram algorithms, the number of followers is not directly proportional to how actively the account will be promoted by the platform. Only the percentage of active people from the total is important. That is, if you have 1,000 followers, and only 50-60 of them are active, Instagram will rarely recommend you to people, and your posts will be at the bottom of the feed.

The activity indicator on Instagram is called ER (Engagement Rate), or engagement rate. It is considered very simple - the sum of likes and comments on the last publication is divided by the number of subscribers and multiplied by 100%. If you want a more extensive analysis, then take the arithmetic average of the last 10-15 posts.

The more inactive subscribers you have, the worse the ER. And bots are definitely not active subscribers.

Look at the screenshots below: after cleaning from bots, the percentage of accounts that saw publications increases.

Also, cleaning from bots has a positive effect on actions with posts. The more live audience sees your post, the more actions are performed in relation to it.

How to detect the presence of bots

You need to carefully monitor your statistics. You can do this using special services, or you can switch to business account mode and open statistics on Instagram itself.

Pay special attention to reach and subscription growth. If it happens in sharp jerks, then most likely someone winds up bots on your account. This is what some unscrupulous competitors do when they want to lower someone's ER and thereby lower him in the top.

If you are actively using mass following as a means of promotion, then keep track of which subscribers come to you. It is better to sort out all suspicious ones in a timely manner so that they do not accumulate and do not have time to seriously affect the statistics. It is better to use not mass following, but mass liking and mass looking. The result will not be so noticeable, but there will be more live subscribers.

By what signs can a bot be recognized?

No avatar, non-original nickname, empty or closed profile. Individually, this may not mean anything, but if the three points match, then you probably have a bot.

Advertising comments. If someone writes newsletters under your posts, then you can be sure that this is done by a spam bot. The stories of such commentators about how they started earning millions by clicking on the link are nonsense. Clean these up as soon as possible.

Some business accounts use mass following to build an audience. These are not bots, but they bring no more benefits. The best solution would be to unsubscribe them from yourself, ridding the profile of the "dead weight".

Below is an example of a suspicious account. So many subscribers and subscriptions, but the profile is empty. Isn't it strange?

Analysis and purification

Analysis can be carried out manually or using services that clean the account automatically. Let's consider both options.

Manual account clearing

If there are few subscribers and the activity is not bad, then you can analyze the account yourself. Based on the criteria above, you can check each account. This is a very tedious process that takes a lot of time.

Services for cleaning Instagram account from bots

There are services that automate all the shenanigans that you do.

SpamGuard

It will check and clean up your account in a few minutes:

Analyze the audience.

Adjusts the list of accounts based on your preferences.

Will clear the account.

It also provides protection against bot attacks and spam comments. Test analysis can be done for 1 ruble. Verification must be made within three days after payment. After three days, the full price subscription will be automatically activated. The subscription can be canceled at any time.

Try SpamGuard →

Nofak.es

An English-language service, also focused exclusively on clearing an account. You can try for free. For regular use, you can buy a monthly subscription or pay once and use the service for an unlimited time.

Try nofak.es →

Zeus

This is a service for comprehensive account promotion. It can collect and filter the audience, provide detailed analytics and account reporting, and block bots.

You can use only the whole range of services, you can not pay separately and use only cleaning bots. You can try the Zeus service for free.

Try Zeus →

How to avoid bot and spam attacks

It's not enough just to clean the bots, because they will come again if certain worlds are not taken. How to avoid it?

Mass following more carefully. After each call, check the newly arrived subscribers. If you don’t have the opportunity to look at Instagram so often, or if you just don’t want to take risks, then use mass liking and mass looking instead of mass following.

Do not follow suspicious links. Even such a seemingly harmless action can turn into not only an invasion of bots and spam, but also an account hacking.

Do not use #followback, #like4like and similar hashtags : they are often used by commercial accounts, bots and spam. Also, do not use millionaire tags, as there will be no live subscribers from them.

Respond quickly. Others come for some bots. Spammers often duplicate comments, and if you simply delete them, new ones will appear.

Do not wind up bots yourself. Seriously, don't.

How to promote your Instagram account

After all the warnings, a logical question arises - how then to promote your Instagram account?

It all depends on how much free time you have.
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