Instagram’s Testing New Limits on How Many Hashtags you Can Add to Your Posts

That is attention-grabbing.

In response to numerous stories, Instagram is now limiting the variety of hashtags that some customers can add to their posts, with 5 being the utmost variety of tags that you may embrace inside a single replace.

As you’ll be able to see on this instance, posted by Instagram professional Jenn Herman (and shared by Matt Navarra), some customers are getting a restrict pop-up as they add hashtags throughout the IG composer, which then restricts them from including extra throughout the submit caption.

Which makes some sense, on condition that Meta has additionally put limits on the number of tags that you can add per post on Threads. In that case, the thought is that by limiting tags to only one per submit, that’ll scale back the capability for spammers to focus on trending subjects, by including as many fashionable tags as they’ll, within the hopes of getting their updates into as many search streams as potential.

Given the logic, the identical may additionally prolong to Instagram, the place spammers commonly goal fashionable tags, although you can additionally add extra tags to the primary remark, which is an strategy that some customers already take, and which already drives more reach in some instances.

So I’m unsure how efficient this could be, given there are methods to work round it.

Perhaps Instagram’s additionally going to restrict the invention worth of hashtags posted inside feedback, or feedback (not replies) added by the creator. If something like this had been additionally enacted, that might make this an even bigger consideration.

Both means, you actually needs to be learning the best hashtags for your small business, and making use of extra particular, focused tags to every of your updates. And 5 is probably going greater than sufficient, however whether it is rolled out extra broadly, this might have an effect in your posting course of, and the way you employ tags in your posts.

Limiting using tags is also one other signal that hashtags merely aren’t as invaluable as they as soon as had been, as social platform algorithms at the moment are getting a lot better at sorting content material primarily based on a broader set of identifiers. If IG is aware of what your submit is probably going about anyway, it most likely does not want guide tags as a lot, which may very well be one other change in course of.

We’ve requested Instagram for extra info on this check (and whether or not it’s truly a glitch), and we’ll replace this submit if/after we hear again.