Hashtags: how do they work?

Reshared post from +Johnathan Chung

Hashtags: how do they work?

I've seen many comment threads with people wondering how to get hashtags to link to their own search query when they aren't typed inline (i.e., when they are at the start of a new line and not within the middle of a sentence).

All hashtags need to be preceded by a space, including when placed at the start of a new line. Otherwise, they won't work. Google is aware of this bug, and they are working on it :)

Hashtags also won't work with text markup because the dash, asterisk, and underscore required to stylize the text with strikethrough, bold, or italics negate the leading space. You can't include spaces within hashtags (i.e., you can't make two separate words), but you can include underscores & dashes to connect those words if need be. Special characters like "&" will also break the tag.

I personally prefer to use all lowercase letters in tags unless there is some ambiguity with letters running together, in which case I like to use capital letters to distinguish words (called "CamelCase").

Here are some examples:

#test << No space in front of the pound sign.
#test << Typed with a space in front of the pound sign.
#test << Hashtag is negated because of the asterisk in front of the hashtag required to make the text bold.
(#test) << Hashtag negated because there is a non-space character before the pound sign.
#compound-words-with-dashes
#compound_words_with_underscores

Currently, there is no difference in results when searching for "#test" versus "test" (without the pound sign), but Google+ Chief Architect, Yonatan Zunger, says this functionality will change in the future.

How you choose to use hashtags is a completely separate issue. I've found that they can be quite helpful while still remaining non-intrusive when used sparingly. Too many hashtags can make passages difficult to read. I personally like to use 1-4 of them as "keywords" listed at the end of a post, but once again, how you use it is completely up to you.


#hashtags #howto

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