Facebook #hashtags appear to be having no impact

With all the hype, chat, blog posts and about every other means the introduction of #hashtags to Facebook seemed like the next big innovation to be let loose on the news feed.

But, recent research conducted by Edgerank Checker pours cold water on the benefits and probably makes disappointing reading for the top brass at Facebook.

No impact on viral reach!

Edgerank Checker analyzed over 500 Pages who posted both with and without a hashtag during the month of July. These Pages posted over 35,000 times during July.

Of the 35,000+ posts, over 6,000 of them contained hashtags. For each of the particular metrics studied, Edgerank Checker averaged each Page’s performance with and without hashtags.

The assumption was that posts, of any type, would attract more activity than those without as the #hashtags were clicked to consume additional information.

The data, however, shows otherwise: posts with hashtags have less Viral Reach than posts without hashtags!

There are a number of reasons why that might be happening: more information can be read here on Edgerank Checker blog