Today, I published a picture on my Instagram with a small caption using hastags.  As soon as I hit the share button, I clicked couple of hastags to verify that the posts popped up in the feed. My instagram hashtags were not working.  My finger punched on a  few other hashtags.  The screen took me to the page of the hastags.  However, my published picture never showed in any of the listed feeds.
Since I am still new to the social media realm and I promised myself that I will at least post a picture for the next thiry days, and I couldn’t post one with a hashtag today,  I had plenty of work to do.  I had to figure out what was the problem.
I reviewed the Instagram FAQ.  Unfortunately, that question was not addressed in their FAQ.
I researched in Google typing, why is my instagram hashtag not working?  I also You Tubed it. With what information I found, I had to do further research.  The further research only led me to possibilities.
My research lead to two possibilites:

Banned Hashtag

1.  One problem could be is that you may have posted with a banned hashtag.  Now, I am new to social media. My response was what?  Social media bans words.
I googled banned hastag for Instagram for 2017.
There were couple of websites that listed banned words.  “Dogs of instagram” and  “elevator,” were a few examples.
If you want to know specific hashtags, google “banned hastgage for Instagram for the year” since the words get updated.  If not, you can type the word that you are searching in the Instagram search bar.  I typed in the word elevator, and this is what I found at the bottom of the elevator page, straight from the Instagram elevator page.

Instagram hashtag not working

By saying that, I read that if one of the words on the hashtag showed on on your hashtag list, then the picture may not get displayed for any of the hashtag that was tied to the post.

Technology issue

2. I also consulted with my tech friend who said, “you know it is technology.  They could be down.”  I googled, ” is Instagram working today?”   This took me to a list of outage reports for Instagram.    Some people were reporting the same issue I was having.  That doesn’t make me feel better, but it does give me hope that I can post my picture with caption tomorrow.