The purpose and practical uses of Instagram hashtags are evolving, and that impacts how you measure hashtag analytics. The platform seems to strategically be doing away with the hashtag culture ingrained into the minds of social media managers and social media users.

However, as of early 2025, there's still a purpose for tracking hashtags and using Instagram hashtag tracking tools. It's just a matter of understanding they aren't the massive engagement drivers they used to be.

Do hashtags still work? How should you work marketing campaigns around the new strategy? Do specific hashtags do better than others? A lot happened in 2024 that impacted the hashtag performance on Instagram, and we're going to walk you through the changes and best practices. 

What is Instagram hashtag analytics?

Hashtag analytics is basically tracking hashtags on social media, Instagram in this case, and seeing how well they helped a piece of content with reach, engagement, or views.

Even in recent years, hashtag performance has been one of the top categories in Instagram hashtag analytics. Now, those social media analytics are few and far between on Instagram, making third-party tools that much more important during the evolution of hashtag analytics.

The evolution of hashtag analytics for Instagram

While hashtags were once the price of admission to get into trending feeds and increase visibility, they have since become about as outdated as the iPod. At least by their initial necessity in categorization and reach.

Today's hashtag data requires adjusting engagement metrics and Instagram marketing strategy. Here's why. 

  1. You can't follow hashtags anymore. In December 2024, the feature was removed due to too much spam and more intelligent AI-driven search results that make hashtags less valuable.
  2. Even popular and top trending hashtags won't make it more likely to show up on Instagram's Explore page. While it won't hurt to use three to five relevant hashtags in a post, the relevant content and keywords of the post fuel potential growth more.
  3. Meta Business Suite and Instagram Insights offer bare-bones hashtag analysis. Only if a hashtag fueled any kind of growth will the results show up in the professional dashboard.

It's a drum Instagram head, Adam Mosseri has been beating for quite some time. He said in an interview in May 2024, "We should get a domain that is like DoHashtagsHelpReach.com, and then we can just put the canonical 'NO.'"

Where hashtags still play a potential role is in categorization and connecting communities. That's where things like branded hashtags, location hashtags, and relevant hashtags can serve an important purpose.

Two important terms to know in Instagram hashtag analytics are trending hashtags and relevant hashtags.

A trending hashtag is one that surged in visibility within a short period of time. It doesn't come with a specific metric, but it means that as Instagram is tracking hashtags, it will let users know how popular it is. A lot of propriety algorithm work goes into the process.

For example, #innovation might have a lot of hashtag popularity, but it hasn't recently surged, so it's not a trending hashtag. Now, if a major announcement about AI technology is released, #AIRevolution might start trending. 

A relevant hashtag can be easily misunderstood, so let's clarify how to define it for your Instagram hashtag strategy. To meet the relevance threshold, a hashtag has to match the relevant content you're posting and match your target audience's search intent.

We look to 9Round kickboxing franchise for this example. Hashtags like #fitness and #workout are certainly relevant. They can also get lost in a sea of hashtags from thousands of fitness centers and won't always match the search intent of the user.

One way they work in hashtags to connect their community using Instagram hashtags is with the #MAXOUTWorkout challenge, where members can post user-generated content with the content that is then searchable on Instagram.

Benefits of using and tracking hashtags on Instagram

Moving forward, tracking hashtag performance is more about how you can use them to enhance relevance and keep your community more engaged and interacting with each other.

Campaign optimization

Certain hashtags are important for marketing campaigns. For example, if you're running a product launch, branded hashtags will help you track engagement across different types of content. Those are things like user-generated content, Instagram stories, or reels.

Monitoring the performance of your branded hashtags lets you tweak the campaign strategy in real-time.

Connecting with target audiences

As long as there are social media users still hooked on hashtags, there will remain a way to connect with your audience and keep an eye on the competition.

Even though you can't follow hashtags anymore, they still work in the search function and will display a hashtag page. The one adjustment is that if the content is relevant, a post won't need to have a hashtag to appear on a hashtag results page.

Hashtag marketing still means knowing the daily or weekly trends. Whereas in the past, you'd want to jump on ANY trend to get into the conversation, now it's about finding trends that resonate with your brand.

By tracking hashtags, you'll get a better feel for which conversations are worth joining and which ones you should sit out. 

Effective Instagram hashtag metrics to track

Hashtag analytics tools give valuable insights as they track hashtag usage, but the emphasis has shifted a bit.

Reach

Reach is still a key metric, showing how many people saw your content. You just don't want to rely on stuffing 30 hashtags into a post, thinking that will help reach. Tracking reach helps you understand whether your content is appearing in new users' feeds.

FWIW, Mosseri said in January 2025 that the most important ranking factors for reach are watch time, interaction, and shares.

Impressions

Impressions indicate how many times your post, reel, or story was viewed, even by the same users. While reach tells you how wide your net is, impression shows how many times fish in your net eat the worm. A hashtag monitoring tool can help show how much (or how little) the hashtag in play impacted impressions.

Engagement

Every social media campaign should aim for engagement, meaning likes, shares, or comments. If you're using the right hashtags with great content, you'll let your fans and followers use engagement to help push your reach. 

Hashtag performance

Performance is most important in 2025 for branded hashtags or specific hashtags connected to your business. When you create a post or video on your Instagram account, you'll be able to start typing and see hashtag suggestions with top trending results.

Follower growth

Hashtag campaigns won't get new followers by themselves, but with the right keywords and engaging content for your specific audience, you're allowing your audience to once again do the heavy lifting by sharing or continuing the hashtag campaign trend.

How to track Instagram hashtag performance

Tracking hashtag performance in 2025 is all about being smart with data and the latest Instagram hashtag abilities. Here's how you can approach it effectively.

Real-time tracking

By looking at the post analytics of any piece of content on your Instagram account, you'll see how your hashtags are performing at the moment. If you don't see hashtags in the Views section of Post Insights, that means hashtags haven't been a driving force. 

Detailed hashtag analytics

You'll need an Instagram hashtag analytics tool to dive deeper into hashtag data beyond the Post Insights. These tools provide specific data about all the important elements — reach, shares, and impressions — but can also see what power the hashtag campaign is getting with your specific hashtags.

A word of caution here: don't spend too much time changing hashtags to improve reach. If the content isn't relevant to your target audience or resonating as you expected, it might be time to change a photo to a carousel or a video. 

Competitor benchmarking

Instagram hashtag analytic tools also allow you to keep an eye on your competitors. Since you can't follow hashtags anymore on Instagram, the third-party tools offer a benefit you can't get through your Instagram account.

If you notice a competitor is doing better with popular hashtags, focus on the type of content they are using instead of overthinking hashtags or relying on hashtag generators. 

Historical data analysis

It's worth noting that historical data analysis can help identify hashtags that work, yes, but also those that flopped and ones that might be a violation of community standards.

Not all banned hashtags are obvious, which is why it's important to check the results of any hashtag you choose to put into an Instagram post. Even if you use the same hashtags that have been deemed spam in the past, no matter how relevant it is, it can hurt your post's potential. 

Top Instagram hashtag tracking tools

When you need help with hashtag strategy beyond the limited information provided by Meta or Instagram Insights, consider one of these hashtag analytics options.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch goes big on hashtag analytics in addition to a suite of services for social media management. With tools like Listen, you can track real-time, trending, and niche hashtags. Book a free demo to see how it works.

Sprout Social

Monitor hashtag performance from Instagram and other social media platforms with Sprout Social. Review hashtag usage on your profiles or your competitors' hashtags easily with tag reports. TagFinder also allows you to see standout hyper-local or regional hashtags on Instagram.

Locowise

Instagram hashtag analytics are covered through Locowise, but the social listening tool also gives context and a competitive edge. Set up automated hashtag monitoring reports or pour through the data manually to find the meaning behind the patterns.

SocialPilot

Smaller teams might benefit from a program like SocialPilot. This budget-friendly hashtag tracking tool skips the bells and whistles of more complex data analysis, instead offering a simple output of the most important performance indicators.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite blends all the tools to analyze hashtags with the built-in ability to publish a post with hashtag generators. Word cloud displays help see the most trending hashtags relevant on a given day.

FAQs about hashtag tracking on Instagram

What is the right number of hashtags to use on your posts?

Common guidance sticks to three to five hashtags per post, reel, or story. Instagram limits hashtags to 30 per post, but don't treat that as a goal.

In fact, it was the practice of people who put all suggested hashtags to the limit mixed with spammers using the same tactics that led to the hashtag being deprioritized in the first place.

As we've discussed, it's far more important that you have good keywords throughout the caption in addition to relevant hashtags on Instagram. 

How can you check hashtag views on Instagram?

One reason a third-party social media strategy tool like Brandwatch is important comes from the fact that Instagram now only allows hashtag research on individual posts.

Go to your Instagram page and scroll through the posts. Between the content and the caption, there is a button to "View Insights." Tap that to get to the analytics screen for that post. If hashtags played a role in drawing in views or engagement, it would be detailed under "Views."

How do you measure the effectiveness of Instagram hashtags?

Given the pace at which Instagram hashtags are evolving, the most important thing social media managers need to do to measure the effectiveness of Instagram hashtags is to stay adaptable.

Hashtag analytics tools and post insights on Instagram help measure what little influence hashtags on Instagram have. Consider reworking your Instagram social media strategy to use hashtags for categorization and organization, not as engagement drivers.

How do you choose the right hashtags for Instagram posts?

Picking the right hashtags on Instagram means respecting the role they play in organizing while still incorporating niche hashtags. For example, if you run a vegan brand, using #vegan is too broad. One could argue that #veganfood, #vegandiet, and #veganforlife are as well.

Look for niche hashtags better aligned with your brand specifically, like #vegansnack or #veganbakingtips. Also, to help your followers find you, it's a good practice to use your brand or business name in a hashtag. That allows users to view the hashtag results page.