Hashtags vs caption keywords: discovery source has shifted

Hashtags vs caption keywords: discovery source has shifted
n=420 accounts, 90-day window, non-follower reach broken down by surface.
— Reach from hashtag surfaces: median 6% of non-follower reach
— Reach from search/keyword (caption + alt text) surfaces: median 14%
Two years ago this ratio was inverted. Hashtags now behave like weak topic-labels, not discovery channels.
By cohort: under-10k accounts still pull slightly more from hashtags (8%) than larger ones (4%).
So what: spend the caption's first 125 characters on searchable keywords, not 30 tags. Treat 3-5 hashtags as categorization, not reach.