Why is your reach low on X? What to check first
Your posts used to get a few thousand views and now they barely clear a few hundred. Before you assume something is wrong with your account, it helps to know what X has actually published about how posts are ranked, and which habits you can check in ten minutes.
First, make sure it's really a drop
View counts are noisy. One post that took off a month ago can make everything since look like a collapse, and a quiet holiday week can look like a trend. Before changing anything:
- Compare medians, not totals. The median views of your last two weeks of posts against the two weeks before is far more honest than an average, which one outlier can drag around.
- Compare like with like. A text post and a post with a video, or a post sent at 3 a.m. and one sent at lunchtime, are not a fair comparison.
- Count your posts. If you posted half as often, fewer total impressions isn't a mystery.
If your median views really did fall by half or more, it's worth digging in. If they wobbled by 20%, that's usually just normal variation.
How X decides what people see (the short version)
In January 2026 X published the code behind its For You feed in the xai-org/x-algorithm repository on GitHub. According to that repository, For You mixes two kinds of posts: recent posts from accounts you follow, and posts from accounts you don't follow that a retrieval model thinks you'll like.
Each candidate post is then scored by a model that predicts how likely you are to take certain actions on it: like, reply, repost, quote, click, spend time reading it, or follow the author. It also predicts negative actions such as "not interested", mute, block and report. Those predictions are combined into one score, with positive actions pushing a post up and negative ones pushing it down.
Two caveats matter. The code shows how the pieces fit together, but the models inside it learn from data nobody outside X can see, and X keeps changing it; the repository lists updates through the autumn of 2026. So treat it as a map of what matters, not a recipe that guarantees results.
Common reasons reach drops
None of these is a verdict on its own. They're the habits we see most often behind a drop, with the part of X's published code that each one relates to, where there is one.
1. You've been posting less, or not at all
The published For You pipeline filters out posts older than a set age (48 hours in the current code). In practice that means older posts drop out of the pool of candidates. A week without original posts means you have little or nothing in that pool. Regular posting matters more than any single great post.
2. You post in bursts
The repository describes an "author diversity" step that lowers the score of each additional post from the same author in a single feed. Five posts in an hour can end up competing with each other. Spreading the same posts across the day or the week gives each one a fairer chance.
3. Most of your activity is replies and reposts
Replies are great for building relationships, but the published code filters replies and reposts from accounts the viewer doesn't follow out of For You. If almost everything you do is replying, very little of it can reach people who don't already follow you. Keep the replies, and add a few posts of your own each week.
4. Your posts don't invite a response
Because ranking leans on predicted reactions, posts that people scroll past without stopping tend to travel less. Look at your best posts from the past few months and ask what they had in common: a clear point of view, a useful detail, a question people wanted to answer, an image that made them stop. Then do more of that.
5. You're repeating yourself
Posting the same announcement over and over, with small changes, is an easy way to get "not interested" taps and mutes from the people who already saw it. Those are exactly the negative signals the model predicts. Say new things, or say the same thing in a genuinely new way.
6. Lots of your posts link away from X
We haven't found a rule in X's published code that says "posts with links rank lower", so we won't claim one. What we can say is that a post whose main job is to send people elsewhere gives them fewer reasons to stay, read and reply on X, and plenty of creators report that link-heavy accounts get less reach. Treat it as a habit to test: put the substance in the post itself, and keep links for when they're truly needed.
7. Your profile doesn't make the case for following you
Following the author is one of the actions the model predicts. When someone taps through from a post they liked, your profile has a few seconds to convince them. A real photo, a bio that says what you post about, a banner and a pinned post that shows your best work all help that moment.
8. You post while your audience is asleep
If most of your followers are in another time zone, posts sent in the middle of their night have less time in front of them before they age out. Check where your audience actually is, and schedule at least some posts for their morning or lunchtime.
9. Something about visibility has changed
Some reasons are simpler than ranking. If your posts are protected, they can't reach anyone new. If a post or account is withheld in certain countries, people there won't see it. X is also piloting a transparency page called Under the Hood that shows statistics about labels that can limit the visibility of your own account and posts, including posts withheld in a country for legal reasons. Availability is still expanding, so you may not have it yet. If you do, that's the place to check, not a third-party tool.
What nobody outside X can tell you
It's tempting to blame a hidden penalty for every bad week. The honest answer is that outside tools can't see X's internal labels, so any tool that claims to "detect" them from the outside is guessing. Only X's own Under the Hood page shows them, and only for your own account. What you can see is your own public data: how often you post, what kind of posts you make, how people react, when you post and who you post for. That's also what you can change, which is why it's where we start.
A ten-minute checklist
- Compare the median views of your last 14 days of posts with the 14 days before.
- Count your original posts (not replies) in the last 7 and 30 days.
- Check whether you tend to post several times within an hour.
- Look at what share of your recent activity is replies and reposts.
- Scan your last 20 posts for near-duplicates and for how many carry an outside link.
- Open your profile as a stranger would: photo, bio, banner, pinned post.
- Check when you post against where your audience lives.
- Make sure your posts aren't protected, and look at Under the Hood if you have it.
Or let us run the checks for you
ReachGrade runs most of this checklist for you, as 21 automatic checks. You sign in with X, we read your profile and your latest 50 original posts (read-only; we never post, follow or like anything), and you get a free 0–100 score, a short description of your content style and the one fix to make first. It only works for your own account. If you want more, a $4.99 full report covers your latest 200 posts with a 7-day plan.
Curious how the number is worked out? How ReachGrade scores your account explains every check, the score bands and what we never do.