Hashtags used to be the main way content got discovered on Instagram, and that has changed considerably. They still help, but the gain is smaller and the way to gain it has shifted. What works now is a small number of specific tags that describe the post, rather than a large block of generic ones.
Why the big generic tags no longer work
A tag like #love or #instagood has hundreds of millions of posts attached to it, and your post arrives in the middle of a feed that is already saturated. The chance of a stranger noticing it is effectively nil. A tag like #sourdoughstarter has a fraction of that volume and an audience that is genuinely interested in the subject, which is the trade worth making.
Two or three specific tags plus one moderately broad one is usually more useful than twenty mixed tags. The specific ones get you in front of the right people; the broad one adds a small amount of extra reach.
Mixing broad and specific
The useful pattern is a spread across levels. One broad tag describes the general category, two or three mid-level tags describe the specific subject, and one or two narrow tags describe the particular detail. A travel post might use one broad travel tag, two regional ones and one very specific one.
Mixing them also stops the caption looking like a list of tags nobody reads, which is a real cost when a caption is meant to be read by a person as well as a machine.
How many is right
Instagram’s own guidance has shifted over the years, and the honest summary is that relevance beats volume. Between three and eight that genuinely describe the post outperforms a wall of thirty. On TikTok two or three is plenty, and on LinkedIn almost none, because the platform reaches people through the feed rather than through tags.
Changing them over time
Using an identical set on every post makes an account look automated and stops you learning anything about what actually reaches your audience. Rotate the broad tags occasionally, keep your specific ones relevant to each post, and keep a note of which sets performed. That note becomes more valuable than any generator.
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Placement, and where it changed
Tags used to go in the caption and that is still where most platforms expect them. Putting several in the first comment was widely recommended for a while on the theory that it kept the caption clean, and that habit outlived the reason for it. Putting them in the caption is simpler and works.
What has changed is how much they contribute. Discovery now runs mostly through recommendation, which is driven by what viewers do rather than by what you typed. A post can reach a large audience with no tags at all if the packaging is strong, and a weak post will not be rescued by fifteen tags.
There is one genuine exception, and it is worth knowing about. Tags and the words in your caption and on your image are indexed by search engines. If you write a caption that naturally contains the phrase people search for, you have covered the search half of the problem. Tags then do very little on top of that.
So the sensible priority order is: make the post worth seeing, write a caption that reads naturally and includes the real words people would search, then add three to eight tags that genuinely describe it. Working down that list is more effective than spending the whole session on the last item.
Keep a record of what you used. After a few months that note is worth more than any generator, because it is built from your own audience rather than a general guess.