Hashtags for YouTube Shorts, how they work and how many to use

On YouTube, a hashtag is a word or phrase with a # in front of it, placed in the title or the description of a video. YouTube turns it into a link. When a viewer taps it, YouTube opens a page that lists videos using that hashtag, along with other related results.

That is the main function: hashtags help viewers find more videos about the same topic, and help YouTube understand what your video is about. They are a label, not a switch. A hashtag does not make YouTube show your Short to more people by itself. The Shorts feed decides what to show based on how viewers react, which we explain in our guide to the youtube shorts algorithm.

• Hashtags describe the topic of the video.
• Hashtags create a clickable link to a hashtag page.
• Hashtags can show up near the title of a video, depending on where you place them and on the app layout.

YouTube also has a separate tags field in YouTube Studio, hidden under Show more on the details page. Tags are not shown to viewers and YouTube has said they play a minimal role in discovery, mainly helping with common misspellings. Hashtags are the visible ones with the # sign. This guide is about hashtags.

For a long time, adding #shorts to the title or description was common advice, and in the early days of Shorts YouTube itself suggested it as a way to help the system recognise a Short. Today, YouTube identifies a Short by its format: a vertical or square video up to three minutes long is treated as a Short whether or not the hashtag is there.

So #shorts is not required for a video to appear in the Shorts feed. Adding it does no harm, and some creators keep it out of habit or because it also links to a hashtag page. But it is not a growth trick, and it should not replace a hashtag that actually describes your topic. If you only have room for a few hashtags, a topic hashtag tells YouTube and the viewer more than #shorts does.

• Not required for the video to count as a Short.
• Harmless if you want to use it.
• Less useful than a relevant topic hashtag.

If your video is not being treated as a Short, the cause is the format, not the hashtag. Check that the file is vertical or square and no longer than three minutes. Our guide to the youtube shorts aspect ratio covers the format in detail.

YouTube's help center sets one clear rule: if a video has more than 60 hashtags, YouTube ignores all hashtags on that video. Its policies on misleading metadata also say that adding excessive or unrelated tags can lead to the video or the hashtags being removed or ignored. Beyond that, YouTube does not publish an ideal number.

In practice, a small number of relevant hashtags works better than a long list.

• Three to five well chosen hashtags cover most Shorts.
• One broad hashtag for the field, such as the subject of your channel.
• One or two specific hashtags for the exact topic of the clip.
• Optionally one hashtag for your series or your channel name, if you use it consistently.

Long lists dilute the label. When a Short carries twenty unrelated tags, none of them describes it well, and a viewer who taps one lands among videos that have nothing to do with yours. Remember the hard ceiling: past 60 hashtags, none of them count.

Hashtags can go in the title or in the description. Both work, and each has its trade off.

• In the title, a hashtag is visible right away and is clickable. It also takes characters from a title that already has little room on the Shorts feed, where the title is shown over the video.
• In the description, hashtags do not crowd the title. YouTube can show the first hashtags from the description near the title on long videos when there are no hashtags in the title.

For most Shorts, a clear title without hashtags or with a single one, plus three to five hashtags in the description, is a good balance. The title then does its job, telling the viewer what the clip is about in plain words, and the hashtags do theirs.

On Shorts the title shows up on the screen over the bottom of the video. A title stuffed with hashtags is hard to read and wastes the most visible text of the clip. Write the title for a person, then add hashtags. If you add one to the title, put it at the end.

Hashtags in the title and description are part of the interface, not the video. But if you also burn hashtags into the video as text, they collide with the bottom band of the interface. Keep on screen text in the central area of the frame, which our guide to the youtube shorts safe zone explains.

A common habit is to add the most popular hashtags of the day in the hope of reaching a big audience. On YouTube this rarely helps. The viewers who tap a broad trending hashtag are looking for something specific, and if your Short is not that, they swipe away. YouTube's spam and misleading metadata policies also treat unrelated hashtags as a problem.

A relevant hashtag does better because it describes the clip accurately. The viewer who finds you through it is the viewer who wanted that topic.

• Use hashtags that a person interested in your clip would actually tap.
• Prefer a specific topic over a generic word.
• Do not use hashtags of other creators, brands or events your clip is not about.
• Avoid hashtags with offensive, sexual or misleading meaning, which YouTube's policies prohibit.
• Check what is on a hashtag page before you use it. If the videos there have nothing to do with yours, pick another.

• Write one sentence describing what the viewer learns or sees in the clip.
• Pull the two or three most specific nouns from that sentence.
• Turn them into hashtags, without spaces, using capital letters at word starts so they are easy to read.
• Add one broad hashtag for your channel topic.
• Stop. Four or five is enough.

For example, a clip from a cooking channel showing how to fix a split sauce could use a hashtag for the dish, one for the technique and one broad cooking hashtag. A clip from a business podcast about pricing a first product could use a hashtag for pricing, one for startups and the name of the show.

If you publish Shorts in a series, a consistent hashtag for the series or for your channel name gives viewers a page where all episodes of that series appear. It works best when the name is unique, so other creators' videos do not fill the page.

• Keep the spelling identical every time.
• Use it only on videos that belong to the series.
• Mention it in your long videos if you want viewers to find the clips.

For agencies managing many channels, a brand kit that stores each client's standard hashtags saves time and avoids mixing up one client's tags with another's.

Many creators publish the same clip on YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels. Hashtags exist on all three platforms, but each one uses them in its own way, so copying the same block of tags everywhere is rarely the best choice.

• On YouTube, hashtags go in the title or description and link to hashtag pages. Relevance and restraint matter, and the 60 hashtag limit applies.
• On TikTok, hashtags sit in the caption of the post. People search and browse by topic, and a few specific hashtags that describe the content are a common practice. TikTok sets a character limit on the caption, which also limits how many tags you can use.
• On Instagram Reels, hashtags go in the caption and are clickable and searchable. Instagram has its own limit on the number of hashtags per post, and it has encouraged using a small number of relevant ones.

Platforms change their limits and recommendations from time to time, so check each platform's help pages when you plan a new format. The principle is stable everywhere: describe the clip accurately with a few relevant tags.

Our youtube to tiktok converter exports the same clip for each platform and writes a separate caption and hashtag set for YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Reels, so you do not post a YouTube style title on TikTok or the other way round.

• Pasting a long block of popular hashtags under every Short, regardless of topic.
• Going over 60 hashtags, which makes YouTube ignore all of them.
• Using #shorts as the only hashtag and leaving out the topic.
• Filling the title with hashtags so the viewer cannot read what the clip is about.
• Using hashtags of brands, events or other creators the clip has nothing to do with.
• Spelling a series hashtag differently each time.
• Copying the same hashtag block to TikTok and Reels without adjusting it.

YouTube Studio shows where viewers came from in the traffic source report of each video. For Shorts, most views usually come from the Shorts feed itself. Hashtag pages and YouTube search can appear as smaller sources. If you want to know whether a hashtag brings anyone, look at these sources over a few weeks rather than a single clip. Our guide to youtube shorts analytics explains where to find each report.

Do not expect hashtags to change the reach of a Short dramatically. Their job is to label the clip and help interested viewers find related videos. The opening of the clip, the topic and how complete the moment feels matter much more.

• Cut the clip so it starts on the strongest line.
• Write a plain title that says what the viewer gets.
• Add three to five relevant hashtags in the description.
• Add the related video link to the long video the clip came from.
• Schedule the Short at a time your audience is active. Our guide on how to schedule youtube shorts walks through it.

Our youtube shorts maker does the first steps for you. ShortsCreator reads the transcript of your long video, ranks the best self-contained moments, cuts them in 9:16 with animated captions from our auto caption generator, and suggests a title, a hook, a description and hashtags for each platform. You edit the text, keep what fits and schedule.