How to Spot Fake Instagram Followers [Free Instagram Audit Tool] (2024)
Influencer marketing can produce incredible results for brands that use it well. Influencer Marketing Hub undertook a survey in 2017 and discovered that the respondents had received a return of $7.65 for every dollar they spent on influencer marketing. However, the results varied. The top 15% received more than $20 for every influencer dollar spent, but 25% either lost money or just broke even. One reason for firms losing money was because they picked poor influencers. They didn't check the authenticity of their influencers or whether they had audience credibility.
As influencer marketing becomes more popular, almost mainstream, influencer selection becomes even more pivotal to a campaign’s success. However, the main prerequisite for a campaign to work is that it uses genuine influencers to spread the brand’s message. There are unscrupulous people online who like the reputation and perks of being considered an influencer, without doing the work needed to reach that status. Moreover, some companies have had their campaigns come unstuck because of these pseudo-influencers.
In short, an influencer has to influence people, have their respect and encourage them to take action. If an “influencer” can’t do that, then they are unworthy of the title.Influencers Marketing Hub’s Fake Follower Checker [Instagram Audit Tool], can help you spot fake or misstated accounts on Instagram.
How to Spot Fake Instagram Followers [Free Instagram Audit Tool & Fake Follower Check]:
Take away much of your worry about the credibility of potential influencers. You can enter any influencer's Instagram handle into the Instagram Bot Analytics Tool [Instagram Audit - Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker] and it will give you an excellent guide to the genuineness of the account.
Do note that this tool is provided by Hypeauditor, for any questions pertaining to a quality score please reach out them directly. Hypeauditor provides this data to publishers, agencies and brands. Accuracy of results are in no way guaranteed by Influencer Marketing Hub.
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Analyze any Instagram account for fake followers and likes
This tool is provided by Hypeauditor. Influencer Marketing Hub in no way guarantees accuracy of these results. Results are generated by Hypeauditors own algorithms. For any questions please reach out directly to Hypeauditor. Use the above Fake Follower Checker to do an Instagram Audit of your account. The tool takes into account factors such as the account's avatar, number of accounts followed vs following ratio, following, fake followers, number of posts, number of likes received vs number of likes ratio in an attempt to establish the audience quality score of the Instagram account.
You should find that any real influencers who work at ensuring their audience is genuine, will attain scores of 80 or above. Anybody who scores poorly would be of little value to your business, and a potential waste of your investment if you were to pay them to promote your product or service.
Most People Suffer From Fake Instagram Followers
The days are long gone since you could say, “It must be true – I read it on the internet.” You cannot just assume that if somebody claims they large numbers of followers on Instagram, that these people take any interest in the person’s account – or indeed that these followers are real people at all.
Unscrupulous people boost their follower numbers by buying followers. Sometimes these are real people, happy to earn extra cash. Other times these are fake accounts set up by bots. No matter how they are created, the fake followers will not engage with the “influencer’s” posts in any way and are of no value to a brand wanting to work with him or her.
Instagram (or indeed the other social networks) cannot eliminate all fake accounts. Determined scammers will always find a way around any security mechanisms Instagram can put in place. So it is up to brands (and indeed genuine influencers) to hunt out and find fake followers.
It is important to remember that it is not just people wanting to inflate their follower lists who have fake followers. Virtually everybody on Instagram has some. This includes genuine influencers (and probably your own account). That is why it is unlikely that our Audience Credibility Checker [Bot Checker] will show your account as having 100% credible followers. Even our Influencer Marketing Hub Instagram account can't quite make an Audience Credibility Score of 100 (it was 99.21% when we last checked), and we make scrupulous checks to ensure only genuine accounts follow us.
Why People Buy Followers
Some people mistakenly think that the most important factor for social media success is the number of followers somebody has. So, they try to take a shortcut to their success and pay to buy followers. They equate the number of followers you display with your level of popularity.
However, that is not how social media works. Anybody can buy followers. But, you will not be an influencer unless you can influence people. You need to become a thought leader in your niche, and organically build your following.
The problem with buying followers is that it gives you a very unbalanced account. You have thousands of followers, but little engagement. The only person you influence is yourself, and it is not that hard for anyone analyzing your account to spot what you have done.
Signs of a Fake Follower
The easiest way to spot a fake follower is to enter their account name into our Audience Credibility Checker / Bot Checker. Although most people won’t have perfect scores here, you will notice accounts with particularly low credibility scores.
But what makes a fake follower? How can you say somebody isn’t a genuine follower? Here are some of the danger signs to look for in an Instagram account.
1. An account has “unusual” numbers.
Genuine accounts tend to have similar patterns when it comes to numbers of followers, people followed, and levels of engagement. Although everybody operates their accounts differently, and some “newbies” don’t run their accounts like seasoned Instagrammers, you can still easily spot outliers.
For instance, they may like and follow thousands of people, but don’t have many following them in return. Perhaps they don’t make many if any, posts themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a bot, but it does suggest that will be of little value as a follower. They definitely don’t influence anybody.
Genuine influencers will have more followers than accounts they follow – often by a substantial margin. For instance, we recently looked at the Top 10 Instagram fitness models. Sommer Ray tops that list. She has 26.4 million followers, but only follows 586 accounts in return.
An ordinary Instagrammer may have a rate closer to 1:1, but nobody (apart from perhaps a complete “newbie”) should have substantially more accounts followed than followers.
Similarly, you should look at a potential influencer’s engagement rate. A quality influencer will have engagement (likes and comments) of about 1.5-3% of their followers, e.g., if an influencer has 100,000 followers, you should see 1,500 – 3,000 likes and comments (combined) on an average post. An engagement rate of 1 percent is okay for many influencers, depending on their niche. If an “influencer’s” engagement rate for his/her posts is regularly well below than this, you should be suspicious, however.
Don’t think higher is necessarily better, however. An engagement rate of 10 percent plus could be suspicious. If you see engagement rates that high, the influencer could be using artificial engagement techniques, such as being part of an engagement group (influencers work together, commenting and liking each other’s posts to boost their statistics).
2. A lot of action for a few days, but then little other activity.
Often somebody will create a bot that follows hundreds or thousands of people on the day of its creation. It may even share some content on that day to make it look genuine. Once the bot has followed sufficient people, it stops and relies on people not checking their accounts and unfollowing the fake account.
Genuine influencers tend to have relatively steady growth in their follower numbers. The rate of increase may grow once they are recognized as an influencer, but they will not have a massive burst of followers in a short period of time (as most fake accounts do).
3. Empty, Hidden or Copied Profile Sections
People creating fake accounts usually don’t put much effort into creating realistic-sounding bios. Sometimes they just leave the bio section blank, or they just fill in the minimum details. They sometimes even adjust the settings to make the profile hidden. This makes your investigation harder, as you can't see their details. You should ask yourself, however, how genuine is somebody who hides their bio details. Are they likely to make an engaging, dedicated follower?
Similarly, you should consider a lack of a profile picture to be a red flag, particularly in a visual medium like Instagram.
In some cases, unscrupulous Instagrammers “catfish” you by creating totally fake bios, often using somebody else’s picture. These are frequently just images picked up from stock photo sites.
4. Spammy, Irrelevant and Clueless Comments
Some of the smarter bot accounts (and even some of the more dishonest human-operated accounts) create comments to make them appear genuine. The problem is that these comments are generic and lack substance. For instance, you might spot that an account continually comments “good picture” or “good job.”
While these comments are technically engagement, they have no value to a brand that is hoping for an influencer to persuade his / her followers that the brand’s product will be suitable for them.
Likewise, some accounts leave irrelevant spam comments, obviously trying to sell something. Sometimes these are poorly thought through and executed sales tactics. In other cases they are more sinister, encouraging you to leave contact information, so they steal your identity.
You can also try the Instagram Money Calculator out to see what your posts are worth.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spot fake followers on Instagram?
As we have written about in this article, our free Instagram Audit Tool [Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker) can help you spot whether any Instagram account has fake followers and likes. It gives you an excellent guide to the genuineness of the account. Any genuine influencers will achieve scores of 80 or above. Anybody who scores poorly would be of little value to you. If your own account scores lowly, you need to spend time identifying and deleting your fake followers.
How can you tell if Instagram followers are fake?
If your account scores poorly in our Instagram Audit Tool, you probably have a high proportion of fake followers. You need to look at your followers and delete any that look suspicious. You should identify any followers with: 1) An account with "unusual" numbers 2) A lot of action for a few days, but then little other activity 3) Empty, Hidden or Copied Profile Sections 4) Spammy, Irrelevant and Clueless Comments
Why do fake Instagram accounts follow me?
There is, unfortunately, a large business of buying and selling fake Instagram followers. Why do people do it? They do it to boost their engagement numbers. Some people want to increase their own follower numbers to make their accounts look more important and active than they really are. They deliberately pay for fake people and bots to follow them. For this to work, however, the fake accounts need to look genuine. So they follow legitimate accounts in the hope that these people follow them back.
How do you spot a fake influencer?
By definition, an "influencer" should be able to influence the decisions of others. Therefore, they need to come across as genuine and knowledgeable in their posts. Unfortunately, some so-called influencers try to make themselves appear more popular than they actually are. They do this by buying fake followers to boost their follower numbers. If you suspect a potential influencer has done this, you can put their account through our free Instagram Audit Tool. Real influencers produce scores of 80 or higher.
Is Instagram cleaning fake followers?
Buying fake followers is very much against Instagram's terms and conditions. Therefore, they are always on the look-out for such practices. Instagram regularly removes accounts it suspects of leaving spam comments and following / unfollowing thousands of unrelated accounts. Instagram has stated that people who use fake follower services may also be punished. Instagram says it may limit access to certain features for such accounts. Therefore, if you notice that your follower numbers have dropped, it may be because some were fake, and Instagram removed them.
Should you buy Instagram followers?
You should never buy Instagram followers. Most of these accounts will either be bots, fake accounts, or disinterested people who have let their accounts be used in return for payment. None of these accounts will look at your posts or participate in any genuine engagement. Over time most of these accounts will disappear from your Followers list, either because they have unfollowed you or because Instagram will have spotted them and removed them from the platform.
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To figure out if an Instagram account uses a bot, consider these five tips: Take a look at the account's comments on other people's posts. If the comments are repeatedly generic, i.e. "Pretty pic," its a sign there's a bot behind the profile. Check if the account has tons of followers, but terrible content.
This November, Instagram made a very important announcement. In an effort to steer the platform clear off inauthentic activities, Instagram will be deleting fake Instagram followers. Instagram wants to provide a completely authentic, genuine experience to its users.
Often if the username is a string of jumbled letters and numbers, there is a good chance it is a bot. You might also notice the profile picture is missing, or shows up in a reverse image search, meaning it has been used many times on the internet.
The idea quickly explained: Social bots automatically comment, like and follow other users on Instagram 24/7 after selecting certain hashtags. This brings accounts a lot of interaction with relevant content and users. This interaction then generates many new likes and followers for their own Instagram profile.
While Twitter says that bot accounts make up about 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users, which was 237.8 million in Q2 of this year, outside estimates put that number as much as three times higher.
Instagram hacks usually happen when attackers find your account information and password details after a data breach, getting access through phishing or third-party apps. Instagram hacks can happen regardless of the device you use to post to your social media account.
Instagram doesn't allow users to see who views their profile. So if you look through someone's profile and don't like or comment on a post, there's no way for them to know who sees the pictures.
So yes, you can buy Instagram followers, but it can do a lot more harm than good for your brand. Instead, you're better off gaining followers organically. It might take more time and require more effort, but at least you'll know those followers are real and not just bots that you paid to follow you.
Yes.You are allowed to buy followers on Instagram. The Instagram bots and algorithm allow you to purchase followers because they know that everyone is doing it to boost their number of followers on social media.
Iconsquare does offer a free Instagram Audit to help people analyze their accounts, however. You can connect your Instagram, enter your email address, and they will send you a free review that tells you where you're shining and where you're falling flat.
An Instagram audit is an opportunity to ensure your account is aligned with your business goals. Think of it as spring cleaning — only instead of dusting ceiling fans, you're polishing up your Instagram content.
What are Instagram ghost followers? Ghost followers are inactive or fake Instagram accounts that may follow you, contributing to your overall follower count. However, they never interact with your content. Sometimes these accounts are created by real people who simply don't use their account.
The milestone comes with an immediate, tangible benefit. Once you have 10k followers, Instagram will make it easier for you to get people to your website via Stories with the swipe up to link feature. Swipe up is the only way to get a direct link from your Instagram to your other web properties.
Instagram follower bots are used to increase the number of followers on an Instagram account, as well as to increase the visibility and engagement of posts. They are used by Instagram account holders to increase a following quickly, but they should be used with caution, as they may violate Instagram's terms of use.
Bot4Gram is one of those rare Instagram bots that offer a free service for their basic features. You can download their latest version easily from their website and quickly start automating your Instagram for free.
Putting your account on private will only hinder the bots temporarily whilst you get the situation under control. But as soon as you put your account on public, the bots could start again. Bots do not tend to follow private accounts as it is easier to spot, especially if the bots were not bought by that user.
Go to the profile of the inactive ghost follower that you want to force unfollow you.Tap on the three dots in the top right corner.Tap Remove Follower.Tap Remove.
To block a bot account, visit the bot's profile then click the three dots on the upper-right corner of the screen.Click “block.” This will block the account and consequently remove it from your followers list.
If you've bought followers or have been sent fake followers, you should be removing them from your account. These are mostly spam bots and your account does not need them. Alternatively, if you've drastically changed your niche, clearing out old followers who aren't interacting with your content is a good idea.
Instant messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slack. Chatbots such as Google Assistant and Siri. The World Health Organization built a bot on WhatsApp to share public information related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tooling that automates your social media interactions to “farm” Likes, Comments, and Followers on Instagram Implemented in Python using the Selenium module.
FollowerAudit is used in our department to check fake followers of business and influencer accounts. It is one of the most reliable tools and has given us excellent service, [and we] haven't faced any problems so far.
Open Instagram and go to your Profile, located at the bottom-most right. Tap on your Followers list at the top. Using the search bar, type in the name of the account who you think might've unfollowed you. If you're unsure about the name, look through the list to find the user.
Instagram has an estimated 95 million fake accounts. With a total userbase of around 1 billion, that means roughly 1 in 10 Instagram accounts are fake.
3 Instagram issues warnings before deleting accounts. 4 Too many warnings will result in account deletion. 5 Multiple reports can draw attention to your account.
If someone attempts to reset your password, Instagram will send you an email informing you of the change—and that means you need to act fast. “I take immediate action as soon as I get a notification or email from Instagram letting me know there was suspicious activity on any of the accounts I manage,” says Krull.
To look at who's seen your story, first open your story. On the bottom left, you'll see the number of people who have viewed each photo or video in your story. To see all usernames of the people who have viewed your story, tap on the profile pictures on the bottom left.
Tap or your profile picture in the bottom right to go to your profile. Tap , then tap Saved. Only you can see the posts you've saved. When you save someone's post, they're not able to tell that you've saved it.
As of now, Instagram doesn't provide you with the information as to who has viewed your Instagram profile. Sure, you do get access to a list of the people who have viewed your stories and liked your posts or reels. But the people who may have visited your profile remain hidden from your sight.
Micro-influencers (between 1,000 and 10,000 followers) make an average $1,420 per month. Mega-influencers (more than one million followers) make $15,356 per month.
Bots have a bad reputation. If you use them incorrectly or too aggressively, Instagram will block your account. It's against the terms of service. In saying that, if you use bots in the right way, your interactions will look natural, and you'll never get found out.
Brands have gotten better at spotting fake followers, usually by calculating a celebrity's engagement rates. So some celebrities have adjusted: not only are they buying followers, they're also buying likes to make sure their engagement rate looks high at first glance.
Will Instagram close your account if you purchase followers? No.Instagram will not close your account if you buy followers. Tens of thousands of people are purchasing followers every month from the 20 best sites to buy Instagram followers that are real and active, and no one gets their account closed.
Yes, your Instagram account can be traced on such social media platforms where users upload their pictures for the world to see. It's easy to trace accounts with the help of the IP address location from where the media content was uploaded. And this can be done through various IP services like IP2Location.
One of the main reasons for getting many spammy random followers on Instagram is bot activities. In the past few years, bot activities have pestered many Instagram accounts. These bots rely on your account to keep their activities.
The police cannot search your phone without a search warrant. However, nothing prevents the police from looking at your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page from their own computers. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches by the police.
Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and later acquired by American company Facebook Inc., now known as Meta Platforms.
Nevertheless, if we take a look at a full picture, fake followers undermine the stats of your account without the possibility to restore it. So, the main reasons you should delete fake followers with no regrets: They decrease your engagement rate. Brands don't like to work with influencers with high percent of bots.
Often if the username is a string of jumbled letters and numbers, there is a good chance it is a bot. You might also notice the profile picture is missing, or shows up in a reverse image search, meaning it has been used many times on the internet.
To block a bot account, visit the bot's profile then click the three dots on the upper-right corner of the screen.Click “block.” This will block the account and consequently remove it from your followers list.
No. This is a myth. Buying followers will NOT get you banned, ever. Millions of users are purchasing followers every year to boost their number of followers, and no one ever gets banned for doing so.
In short–yes, you can buy Instagram followers, but it's not always so simple. Buying Instagram followers isn't cheap, and these followers are often bots who don't engage with your profile by liking and commenting on your posts.
How to Search with Fake Image Detector. Download and install the Fake Image Detector app from the Chrome or Firefox app stores. Open the app and select one of two options: Choose from gallery — This provides access to places where photos are stored on your phone so you can perform a reverse image search.
Start by doing a reverse image search on the image you were sent. If the results coroborate what you were told, that's fairly good evidence (though not absolutely conclusive). If the result shows you different details, you know you're being conned. If you can't find the image, you remain in the dark.
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