Hashtags have been one of the most crucial derivations that popularized mainly on Instagram and sooner became a crucial component of all others.

While on one side, when they became super viral and everybody started using them in their posts, there came a few negative aspects as well airing all over that became a cause of worry for the entire platform.

You know what these were?

The Instagram bots!

And also some of the wicked people, who indirectly tried to inject their personal objective via their Instagram posts using particular hashtags the content of which was against Instagram’s terms and conditions.

As a result…

When users spotted such content that went outside the platform guidelines, there came a series of reports for certain posts that were circulated using a particular hashtag.

Therefore…

To crackdown on such accounts, Instagram came up with a strict rule of banning certain hashtags to limit the reach.

And also to spot such fake accounts that it can ban for using a particular hashtag (it is particularly what people refer to as shadowban).

And that’s all how it started.

A new phrase came into existence as ‘banned hashtag’ which invoked some serious alarm whenever users heard about it.

You know why?

It was because using banned hashtags not only limited your organic reach on the platform but also led closer to getting banned (sometimes even permanently).

Instagram flagged users who used banned hashtags a few times and banned them later if they continued to use them again and again (even though it was all by mistake).

As a result, there came a flood of apps and services claiming to lift the ban from your account, alerting when you would get banned, and whatnot (most of them were all BS, to be frank).

Long story short, it sooner reached the masses that these are the hashtags that they should never be using no matter what.

And that’s the only thing that YOU too should remember and understand.

That said, when I searched for posts online I was flooded with loads of information from different blogs which also cited the long list of banned hashtags that users can refer to while posting online.

However, my friend…

It’s completely useless!

And I am not condemning their efforts.

They must have worked quite hard to find and write it all down for you so you can save some time.

But the problem is…

The banned hashtags keep on changing a lot.

Instagram never made it all public about the number of hashtags that it blocked till now.

Moreover, it also didn’t mention the time limit that exists for a certain ban.

So…

The ban that you see now for a particular hashtag might not be active the next month, or even the next day.

It keeps on changing!

And of course, it excludes the permanently banned hashtags which will always be banned on the platform.

Now you may wonder…

What can I do to spot such banned hashtags and stay away from them?

So, I have a solution for you that will save you a lot of time and effort and keep you on the safer side.

That too, 100% FREE!!!

There is a site named ‘IQ Hashtags’ that helps you keep this all sorted.

Here’s what you need to do-

Visit the site- Banned Hashtag Checker (LINK)!!!

And then paste the hashtags that you want to use on your posts.

The result you see thereafter are the hashtags that you can use on your posts.

Leave the hashtags that it highlighted as banned, and use the rest.

That’s it!

Now some of you might be in the position where using a certain phrase or hashtag is mandatory.

What could you do then?

Well…no matter how tough it all looks, it exactly quite the opposite!

Here is how-

Try the variant of particular hashtags.

As you can see, the term #beautyblogger is banned on Instagram, but if I put it with “s” at the end (in the plural form) as ‘#beautybloggers’, the term is not banned.

See the image for more examples-

So as you can see…

#besties is banned, but not #bestie.

Likewise, #girlsonly is banned, while #girlonly isn’t.

So even if you came across a certain hashtag and it becomes mandatory for you to use them, make sure you add some variation to it so you don’t get penalized.

Some of the ways to add variations are- add ‘s’ to your noun, or add any emoji, or you can turn your hashtag into plural or singular, or maybe change the verb to some other tense and so many more.

Just give it some thought and you will make one (substitute hashtag for the banned hashtag) easily.

So…

That’s it for today and if you have any queries or doubts, just let me know in the comments down below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Till then?

See you next time!

Bye-bye.

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