Facebook is adding another factor to News Feed ranking so that it will now predict how long you spend looking at an article in the Facebook mobile browser or an Instant Article after you have clicked through from News Feed. Facebook says that this update to ranking will take into account how likely you are to click on an article and then spend time reading it. Facebook will not be counting loading time towards this - the company will be taking into account time spent reading and watching once the content has fully loaded. Facebook will also be looking at the time spent within a threshold so as not to accidentally treat longer articles preferentially.

With this change, Facebook says it will better understand which articles might be interesting to you based on how long you and others read them, so you’ll be more likely to see stories you’re interested in reading. This change only factors in the time people spend reading an article regardless of whether that time is spent reading an Instant Article or an article in the mobile web browser.

Facebook has started rolling this out and will continue over the coming weeks.