Hashtag Research

Hashtag Research answers one question: which tags can you realistically be seen in? You type a keyword or a hashtag, and every result comes back with its size, a reach tier and an opportunity score, so the difference between a tag nobody reads and a tag you would sink in sits in the row instead of being something you guess at. Reach for it while you are planning a post, before you write the caption.

Before you start#

You need to be signed in, and you need credits. A keyword or hashtag you have not searched before is a paid search, and refreshing the numbers on an individual tag is charged separately. The current prices are on the pricing page.

You do not need to connect a social account: everything here reads public Instagram data, so research works on the first day of an account that has published nothing.

The module sits under Discover in the main navigation, named Hashtag Research. If it is missing from the menu, the module has been switched off and an administrator can turn it back on. What it covers in outline is on the Hashtag Research page.

Run your first search#

1. Open Hashtag Research. Under the platform tabs there is a single field labelled Keyword or hashtag.
2. Type what you are after. One word, with or without the #, is looked up as a hashtag. Two or more words are read as a keyword: each word is matched on its own and the glued-together compound as well, so coffee shop also finds #coffeeshop. Word order does not create a second search: morning coffee and coffee morning are one search, charged once.
3. Suggestions drop down as you type. The arrow keys move through them and Enter picks one, which takes you straight to its results.
4. Press the search button. When the search would be charged, the price rides on the button itself; when you have already paid for that keyword, the button says you are simply opening results and carries no price. Arriving at a paid search from a link opens a confirmation card first. Loading a URL never charges you.
5. The first rows appear almost at once and the rest fill in behind them. A bar at the top of the results card says what is still in flight: how many hashtags are being refreshed live, and whether more rows are loading. Both vanish on their own, and metrics that arrive late land in the rows without a reload.
6. Results come back under two tabs. Related Hashtags holds what matched your query. Also Used Hashtags holds the tags that genuinely appear alongside those results, ranked by how often they turn up together. This is where a keyword search becomes a set of tags you had not thought of. The number in each tab label is how many rows you have; a trailing + means the match set is bigger than one search returns.
7. Below the table, Top Content shows the strongest recent posts for the tag you searched, stamped with when their numbers were captured. It comes with the search rather than costing extra.

Repeating a search you have already paid for is free while its data window is open, so you can come back to it without spending again.

Turn results into a list#

1. Tick the checkbox on any row. A bar appears above the table with the count and four actions: Clear, Copy, Refresh and Add to List.
2. Copy puts the selected tags on your clipboard as plain text, ready to paste anywhere.
3. Add to List drops them into one of your lists, or into a new one. Create New List asks for a name, a colour and an icon. A list can be tied to a single platform, in which case it is greyed out while you are looking at another.
4. Your lists live on the start page under Your Lists. Opening a card shows its tags in the same table, where you can add more by name, rename the list, remove single tags, copy a selection or delete the list.
5. Under Ready-made there is a set of curated lists grouped by topic, with a filter box for finding one by name. They are read-only: copy from them and refresh a tag through them, but they are not yours to edit.
6. When you write a post, the caption toolbar has a Hashtags button whose My Lists tab holds these same lists; choosing one inserts the whole set into the caption. Banned tags are never inserted, and tags merely reported as restricted are skipped on a wholesale insert, though you can still add those individually. The rest of the composer is covered in publishing and scheduling.

Reading the results#

Posts is how many posts carry the tag. It is size and nothing else; on its own it says nothing about whether you can win there.

Tier is that same figure expressed as a band. There are five, from Micro through Niche, Rising and Popular up to Viral, and it is the fastest read on whether the room is empty or packed.

Score runs from 0 to 100 and is the column to sort by. It weighs the engagement posts in that tag actually earn, how contested the tag is, and how alive it is, which is why it deliberately does not put the biggest tags first. The row with the largest Posts number is usually the one you cannot win.

Posts/day is how fast the tag moves, roughly how quickly a new post is pushed out of sight. It is an indication, and it is kept out of the score on purpose.

Avg Likes and Avg Comments are what a typical post in that tag's feed earns.

Every figure carries its provenance. A plain number was measured from the hashtag's own feed. A ~ in front of a number marks an estimate, and an amber dot beside the hashtag name means at least one figure in that row is estimated. A dash, or No data, means there was not enough signal to report anything. The How to read metrics link above the table repeats the convention.

Two badges can appear next to a name. A red banned badge is a confirmed verdict: the tag is kept out of suggestions and cannot be refreshed. An amber risky badge is an unverified report from a public list, shown so you can judge it rather than hidden as though we were certain.

The refresh icon at the end of a row lights up only when there is something worth buying: a tag with no metrics yet, or one whose data has gone stale. Greyed out, its tooltip says which case applies: the data is complete and current, a free background refresh is already running, or the tag is banned. Refreshing a selection from the bar charges only the eligible rows, and the confirmation says how many it skipped and why.

What this does not do#

• Instagram only. The TikTok, YouTube and X tabs are marked as coming soon and cannot be clicked, rather than quietly returning nothing.
• Not every tag in the index has been measured through an API. Estimates are labelled as estimates; treat them as an order of magnitude, not a figure to quote.
• One search returns a capped set of rows, not every tag that matches. When there is more behind the cap, the tab count carries a +.
• Posts/day is an indication and never feeds the score, however you sort the table.
• A risky badge is a report, not a ruling. We have no live view of what the platform is currently restricting.
• Nothing here is watched over time. This is a reading of a tag today; to build an archive of a hashtag's posts, its sentiment and its trend, use hashtag reports.

When something looks wrong#

The search came back empty. The credits go back automatically. A search that finds nothing is not a search you paid for. Try a single word instead of a phrase, or the tag written without spaces.

Rows read "No data" straight after a search. Metrics are still being fetched. The bar above the results counts them down, the rows update themselves as figures arrive, and reloading the page does not make it happen sooner.

The refresh icon is greyed out. That is the price gate working, not a fault: hover it and the tooltip says which of the three reasons applies.

A row in Recent Searches shows Expired. Its data window has closed, so the stored results are out of sight. Running it again is a fresh, paid search, and it reopens free access for another window. That rule is the same across every paid surface here: you paid, you keep reading; new numbers cost.

Something else. Write to support with the exact query you used, and we can see what that search actually returned.