Instagram Limits Hashtags to Five Per Post to Improve Content Discovery

The photo-sharing platform, Instagram, has announced that it is going to restrict content discovery on the platform. This comes after it decided to enforce a hashtag limit on creatives posting their contents on the platform. According to the social media giant, which is owned by Meta, posting contents with fewer hashtags has the ability to improve discoveries instead of posting many hashtags on a piece of posted content. This has come at a time when it was expected to reduce spamming.

Introduced on the network since 2011, hashtags are a long-standing feature of Instagram that purportedly help with post discovery. According to the technology behemoth, this feature allows photos to appear in relevant topic searches, trending, and algorithmic recommendations. The Meta-owned social media platform previously allowed users to add up to 30 hashtags to a single post, but this will no longer be possible.

Through the Creators Account, the company announced that starting today, Instagram will allow a maximum of five hashtags in a Reel or post. The social media giant stated, "We've found that using fewer (up to five) more targeted hashtags instead of many generic hashtags can improve both your content's performance and people's experience on Instagram."