Instagram Announces a Five-Hashtag Limit for Reels and Posts to Improve Content Discovery

Instagram on Friday announced a limit for content discovery on its platform. It is enforcing a restriction on the number of hashtags that can be attached to a Reel or post. According to the Meta-owned social media giant, using fewer and targeted hashtags can significantly help creators in content discovery and performance, as opposed to spamming posts with generic and numerous hashtags. This move is aimed at preventing misuse of the functionality.

Limiting Hashtags on Instagram

Introduced in 2011, Hashtags on Instagram have been a long-standing feature that is claimed to assist in content discovery. As per the tech giant, this functionality enables posts to appear more frequently in topic-based searchers, trending lists, and algorithm-driven recommendations. The Meta-owned social media platform has allowed users to add up to 30 hashtags to a post, but not anymore.

Via the Creators account, the company announced that Instagram will allow up to five hashtags in a Reel or post beginning today.

“We find that using fewer (up to 5) more targeted hashtags, rather than many generic ones, can improve both your content's performance and people's experience on Instagram,” the social media giant said.

It wants creators to be more intentional with the hashtags they use and focus on the ones relevant to the content they are publishing. Providing an example, Instagram said that beauty creators can use beauty-related hashtags to help attract users interested in beauty content.

Generic hashtags such as #reels or #explore, which are commonly used by creators, don't “actually help” the content appear in the Explore feed and other places. On the contrary, these could hurt the content's performance, the company said.

This development follows a previous report from earlier this month, which claimed that Instagram was testing a cap of three hashtags per Reel or post. A notification reportedly appeared while adding a hashtag, stating that only three hashtags were allowed.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has already confirmed that hashtags “don't work”, clarifying that they are no longer the driving factor behind reach or visibility on Instagram.