Geotagging has long been a popular feature on Instagram, allowing brands and users to tag locations on their Instagram posts, thus enabling their followers to see where the content was created.
The general understanding is that enabling this feature on your Instagram content can potentially (and positively) impact the performance of said post. Some commonly cited benefits include higher engagement, increased reach, and improved discoverability of content.
But we wondered…is this true? In this edition of Random Labs, we will be doing a basic comparison of metrics between content with geotagging enabled and content without geotagging to validate some of these hypotheses.
We will be evaluating organic content performance for Instagram from our awesome partners over at Trasca & Co Eatery and Ponte Vedra Tap Room. We tallied all the content posted on these Instagram channels over 2024, using geo-tagging as a separator. The following images show examples of Instagram posts that feature this:
For the comparative analysis, we compiled a sample of approximately 150 posts from 2024 and compared the descriptive statistics of post metrics, using a simple identifier to separate the data: posts with geotagging versus those without. As it is generally difficult to obtain identical samples of both types of content throughout the year, we will use a similar method of comparing uneven samples, as we did in our previous Random Labs analysis on the performance impact of faces in social media content.
The following table compares the average metrics between the two types of Instagram content as well as the test results for each unique post metrics:
Once again, in this Random Labs analysis, we use hypothesis testing to statistically determine whether any Instagram performance metrics differ between content with or without geotags.
The sample size for each post type is denoted by n, a widely used standard notation in statistics. We also report the averages for both types of content (with and without geotags) along with the corresponding p-value from the test for each specific metric.
A p-value helps you understand whether the result of an experiment happened by random chance or by something meaningful—geotagging, in our example. Furthermore, we need a way to decide whether the p-value is small enough to consider the result significant.
This is where the alpha (α) level comes in. This alpha level is a threshold we set before the test to decide when we will be convinced that those results were meaningful. 0.05 is a commonly practiced threshold, which means in our example that we are willing to accept a 5% chance that our results happened by random chance. If our p-value is less than this threshold, we conclude a significant test for the metric.
Based on our tests, we did observe a few statistically significant impacts of geotagging.
We found that Instagram posts featuring geotags did not significantly differ in terms of comments, saves, reach, or impressions compared to those without geotags. This may be due to a few hypotheses or constraints. Geotagging represents only one difference between the content being compared. Higher-weighted engagements, such as comments and saves, may be more influenced by factors like visuals, messaging, content type, seasonality, etc.
Additionally, the inclusion of geotagging alone may not result in increased post reach. But we believe this could vary depending on the specific location. Highly popular locations may yield different results.
On the flip side, we did observe significant results when comparing geotagged posts to non-geotagged posts in terms of likes. There was enough evidence to suggest that geotagging has a meaningful impact on the number of likes a post can receive. The difference in likes was also strong enough to conclude significance in overall engagement, as this metric typically has the highest volume of interactions compared to other engagement types.
People may be more inclined to like posts related to places they are familiar with, as users are more likely to engage with content from their city or favorite spots. Additionally, there may be a psychological factor at play. Geotagging adds a sense of authenticity, making posts from real, specific locations feel more genuine.
Overall, the impact of geotagging may vary depending on your industry, location, audience, and other factors. However, it would be premature to assume that geotagging cannot have an impact on your content. It is important to frequently leverage the social media data available to your business.
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