How and why to use HashTags
Hashtags are available to use in Google+ and help users find your content and help you organize your own posts. We recommend using hashtags in your posts (no more than 3 that are relevant) to get organized and be found. You can look for key topics that have high search numbers by reviewing our post “High Impact Keywords“. These are good keywords to use as hashtags.
How do you use them? Hashtags look much like other social networks (Twitter, Facebook), you simply use the hashtag “#” (number sign) in front of a topic to get topic options. Hashtags do not have spaces in them. There are no restrictions on what hashtags you use, you can make ones up for yourself or use common ones that helps other users find the posts. When you’ve finished typing it , it changes to a blue coloured link and after posting, the hashtag becomes a clickable link.
Auto-tags
Google+ can also auto-create up to three hashtags. If you don’t add any hashtags, then Google+ will attempt to identify the main keywords of the post and convert to hashtags. These are displayed in the same way as user supplied tags. The hashtags may be generated based on the text of the post, or even from the title of links you include or photos you include.
To opt out of having related hashtags from Google added to new posts you create:
Go to your Google+ Settings page and look under the section called “Hashtags.” Then, uncheck the box labeled “Add related hashtags from Google on my newly created posts.”
Related Hashtags
Whether you’ve carefully chosen your hashtags or Google has auto-tagged your post, they both may show up in the upper right as Related Hashtags. These hashtags can be clicked to triggers a search for more posts using that tag or they can be removed if you press the X button beside the hashtag. If Google’s autotagged inaccurately this would be useful for you.
What happens with Hashtags
The purpose of hashtags is to organize content so that it can be discovered by users. Early in 2014, users began seeing a tav at the top of the Google+ pages for “Explore”. This is where you can search and discover content via its hashtags. When you search for a topic, you get a list of related hashtags as well as a collection of content tagged with the hashtag (or its related).
For frequent users of Google+ Hashtags can be useful for organizing and finding your posts. As well, in active Google+ communities you can search within them using hashtags to rediscover old posts.
