Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Get Started
Close

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Get Started
Social Media Marketing  |   Instagram Marketing

Instagram Debuts New Hashtag Search API for Business

Jessie-Lee Nichols

By Jessie-Lee Nichols

Nov 7, 2018

Instagram Debuts New Hashtag Search API for Business

Since the deprecation of Instagram’s current Hashtag Search was announced to begin on December 11, 2018, we’ve been waiting for a follow up that highlights these new features.

This past Wednesday, news finally broke.

Instagram announced a new hashtag search API that will allow businesses to search up to 30 hashtags in a seven day period.

This new change comes with a very specific goal for the Instagram team of creating an API which enables marketers like you to expand your reach and build brand awareness, while protecting user privacy and safety.

That’s a change we can all get on board with! Anytime we can put our users first, we all win.

Let’s break down what’s actually happening with these changes.

What’s Coming with the New  Instagram Graph API?

The new Instagram Graph API features will include the following for businesses:

  • Hashtag Search (NEW!): This will allow businesses to find public photos and videos that have been tagged with a hashtag  relevant to their business or audience.

  • Insights (Existing): Businesses can access and analyze valuable metrics about their business profile to contribute to the performance of their organic content.

  • Mentions (Existing): Identify public captions, comments, and other media in which your business account has been mentioned.

  • Comment Moderation (Existing): Efficiently interact with your audience through comments under their media on Instagram by replying to comments, deleting comments, hide/unhiding comments, and disable/enable comments on your media objects.

  • Business Discovery (Existing): Get basic metadata and metrics for other business accounts

  • Content Publishing (BETA!): Through Facebook Marketing Partners and Instagram Partners only, post an image to a feed with or without a caption. Scheduling has never been available on Instagram until now, so this is huge for brands!

It's currently unclear if/how these changes will affect non-business accounts. 

But Here’s the Catch...

Unlike the previous hashtag search feature, the new API will be limited to the number of queries it can perform during a seven day period.

From the Facebook for Developers page, “You can query a maximum of 30 unique hashtags on behalf of an Instagram Business User within a rolling, 7 day period.

A queried hashtag will count against this limit as soon as it is queried. Subsequent queries on that hashtag within 7 days of the initial query will not count against the limit.”

Search results will no longer include personally identifiable information, nor will business be able to comment on hash-tagged media objects via the API. Hashtags that appear in Instagram Stories will also not be identified by the new API.

Next Steps

Don’t fret, while this new API is more limited in features compared to previous versions, it’s still super valuable.

Posts that have at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement and lead to more followers. Having the ability to search hashtags allows businesses to identify relevant conversations and trends that can help inform your marketing strategy.

It also provides a quick way to find negative commentary surrounding a brand giving businesses the ability to address it swiftly.

Learn more about the changes here and mark your calendar for December 11, 2018 when changes take effect.

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.

Related Articles

Why Short-Form Videos Are Vital Tool for Reaching Your Audience

September 25, 2023
Lindsey Schmidt Lindsey Schmidt

Your B2B Content Strategy Is Going to Need More Social

June 21, 2023
Nick Bennett Nick Bennett

12 Ways You're Totally Blowing Your Business Social Media Strategy

June 18, 2023
Mary Brown Mary Brown

Should Your Demand Gen Strategy Change in a Slumping Economy?

April 12, 2023
Nick Bennett Nick Bennett

How To Build an Effective Instagram Video Marketing Strategy

April 30, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

How Facebook's news feed algorithm works and prioritizes content

July 14, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Data: Facebook is No. 1 in revenue value for publishers, Twitter is a bust

July 7, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Best times to post on social media in 2021 (new data)

May 19, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Twitter fails to buy Clubhouse, whose creators can now make money... so what?

April 8, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Marketers, Facebook Analytics will be no more on June 30, 2021

April 2, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

7 Best Social Media Management Tools (+ Video)

March 26, 2021
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney

Twitter teases Super Follows, Communities; undo send tweet still a rumor

March 11, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

LinkedIn adds new 'Products' highlight tab on company pages

February 25, 2021
Melissa Smith Melissa Smith

54 jaw-dropping social media statistics for businesses [New for 2021]

February 23, 2021
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney

Facebook video best practices: what you need to know to grow your video presence

February 16, 2021
Lindsey Schmidt Lindsey Schmidt

27 best digital marketing news sites

January 26, 2021
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

Should you care about Clubhouse, the new audio-based social media app?

January 19, 2021
Nick Bennett Nick Bennett

How to maximize lead generation via Facebook posts and ads

January 18, 2021
Myriah Anderson Myriah Anderson

Working with IMPACT on paid media: What to expect

January 13, 2021
John Becker John Becker

Instagram advertisers can create branded content ads on creators’ accounts

January 6, 2021
Justine Timoteo Thomas Justine Timoteo Thomas

The top 10 social media trends for brand survival in 2021 [Infographic]

January 2, 2021
Joe Rinaldi Joe Rinaldi

6 holiday campaign examples that are total showstoppers

December 25, 2020
Dia Vavruska Dia Vavruska

Pinterest continues diversity and inclusion efforts with new features and leadership

December 16, 2020
Shandia Drummond-Butt Shandia Drummond-Butt

TikTok still available in the US despite not reaching a sell-off deal

December 11, 2020
Karisa Hamdi Karisa Hamdi

New Pinterest weighted ads have better CX customization

December 8, 2020
Allison Melnik Allison Melnik