#banned – The 60,000 Restricted Hashtags.

Here we are hashtagging our picture of London with #citycentre and wondering why the likes aren’t flying in – turns out this harmless phrase is one of the many that Instagram are saying aren’t allowed as a hashtag on their site.

Did you know that by using a single banned hashtag in your Instagram post, ALL of your hashtags will be undiscoverable for that post?

There are two types of ban – one is a soft ban, restricting the number of results for particular hashtags and they are being carefully moderated, and then there is the total ban, providing no search results for that hashtag. Instagram will remove the ‘most recent’ section and only displays a few top posts for you to look at.

Of course, many of the bans are the obvious no no’s that you would expect, in an attempt to filter out explicit and inappropriate content. However, others that fall under the ban are shocking to say the least.

A list that includes #brain #dogsofinstagram and #newyears quite frankly has many people reeling.

Next time you are carefully selecting your hashtags, make sure you check they haven’t been shelved alongside #desk and #valentinesday in the not allowed category, to avoid your hashtag efforts being a waste of time.