Why some Instagram posts don’t appear in your analytics
Updated 2 months ago
Some of your Instagram posts may not appear in your Metricool analytics. This may be due to certain limitations of Meta’s official API. The most common causes are age or country restrictions, collaborative posts, video posts, expired connection permissions, and posts published before you connected your account.
Posts restricted by age or country
Instagram doesn’t allow access to posts marked as sensitive, 18+, or restricted by country through its official API.
Even if you are the account owner, those posts won’t appear in your statistics or reports.
Age or country restrictions are applied automatically and filtered by Meta for privacy reasons.
There’s no permission, token, or setting in Meta’s API that allows access to this type of content.
This limitation applies whether you connected your account to Metricool with your Instagram credentials or through Facebook. These are two different APIs, but both block this type of content.
How to tell if a post is age-restricted
View the post while logged out of an account or unregistered. If you see the message “Photo/video restricted. You must be over 18 to see this photo/video.”, the post has an age restriction enabled.
This kind of content can’t be accessed via the API, so it won’t appear in your analytics or reports in Metricool. Use this check when you suspect a post isn’t showing up for this reason.
Collaborative posts
Collaborative posts (co-created with another account) only show up in your analytics if your account is the original creator. If you are a collaborator but not the creator, it won’t show up in your analytics.
To see the data anyway, add the creator account as a competitor in Metricool to track its performance. You can only access the public information of the post, and if the account has likes hidden, that metric won’t be available.
Other common causes
Video posts (default as Reels)
Instagram automatically converts all individual videos into Reels, even if they weren’t explicitly shared as such. If you’re looking for a video under traditional posts and can’t find it, it’s probably classified as a Reel in Metricool.Incomplete or expired connection permissions
When connecting your Instagram account, you need to accept all required permissions from Facebook and Instagram. If permissions are revoked or the access token expires, some posts may stop syncing properly. In that case, you can refresh the connection from Metricool to restore access.Posts published before connecting the account
Only the last 60 days are synced from the moment you connect your account. If you have a paid plan, you can request an extended sync via the chat.
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