15 free Hashtag Analytics & Hashtag Tracking Tools

15 free Hashtag Analytics & Hashtag Tracking Tools header image

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Hashtag analytics and tracking are key to planning and managing an effective campaign on social media.

Hashtags started as a way to search for things on Twitter. They're now cross-platform and multi-purpose, used by companies and individuals alike for everything. From major global events like The #WorldCup Final and #SuperBowl, to expressions of solidarity like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

A good hashtag will capture the imagination of the online public. It helps companies, organizations, and individuals dramatically increase their social media presence.

With so many mentions, tracking hashtags effectively is challenging. Especially across different countries, different languages, and different contexts.

So what’s the solution? Hashtag analytics.

How do hashtag analytics help you identify the best hashtags?

Hashtag tracking tools find the best hashtags for your marketing campaigns and track post performance. Helping you analyze your strategy effectively, and boost your social listening strategy

  • Use hashtag analytics to identify the topics and posts that are resonating with your target audience
  • Identify which hashtags you're using most, and those that are generating high engagement
  • Discover the most influential and active channels that mention a hashtag

How to do hashtag analysis

If you include hashtags in your social media content, you'll increase the reach and engagement of your social posts.

This is because social media users search for relevant content by using hashtags. Each of the hashtag tracking tools I've listed below, explains how to use each tool for hashtag analysis.

Which hashtags to track

I'll cover the most common hashtags that you'll be using in your social media messaging...

  • Branded hashtags
    This is a hashtag that you create for your brand. For example, on Instagram and Twitter (X)  we use the hashtag #Talkwalker. The Nike brand uses #JustDoIt.
    If you use Twitter hashtag analysis to track a branded hashtag, you’ll see how many people are talking about you.
  • Trending hashtags
    You'll find which hashtags are trending for your country/region on the right sidebar in Twitter. How to check the tweet count on Twitter is easy.
    The channel includes a Twitter tweet count that tells you how many people are talking about each hashtag. Knowing what's trending - what people are talking about - identifies the trends to jump on.
  • Event hashtags
    When you host an event, do you create an event hashtag? If you attend an event, do you live tweet and include the event hashtag?
    You really should. You'll generate traction around your event, reach a wider audience, and invite more engagement for your content.
  • Campaign hashtag
    This is a hashtag that you create for a campaign or product launch. When we publish a report on the most loved brands in the world, we use #BrandLoveStory. This spotlights our campaign and generates buzz around our report.

  • Content hashtags
    These are the little beauties that you include in social messages to highlight the topic, and help people find the content that interests them.
    Talkwalker tweets use #SocialListening #SocialMediaAnalytics #HashtagTracking, etc.

Paid & free hashtag tracking tools

Tools to help you track hashtags in real time come in many shapes and sizes. Some focus on monitoring the conversation, others focus on influencers, and some help you understand exactly what hashtags mean.

We’ve listed 15 free hashtag tracking tools with recommendations from social media experts.

What's a good free hashtag analytics tool?

At Talkwalker, people ask, "How to get hashtag analytics for free." While most of these tools offer both free and paid options, some features may be chargeable in the future. But Talkwalker's Free Social Search - our very own hashtag tracker - is and will remain free.

Talkwalker | Track hashtags 

How to track hashtgs for free? While our Analytics platform has a cost, if want a good free hashtag analytics tool, try Free Social Search.

Still packed with amazing features - a free hashtag tracker and hashtag analyzer - to easily measure the impact of hashtags. It looks at a variety of metrics including general buzz, engagement, sentiment, and potential reach.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - Chimmy Choo image analysis

Free Social Search - sentiment, mentions, engagement surrounding #JimmyChoo.

 

Hashtag analytics and tracking - Quick Search Jimmy Choo word cloud

Free Social Search hashtag cloud.

 

Of course for a more comprehensive analysis, you require a paid tool like Talkwalker Social Listening.

Talkwalker Social Listening includes:

  • A more comprehensive range of data sources, including 30 social networks and 150 million websites globally
  • Visual analytics to identify the brand logos most associated with hashtags
  • Real-time alerts. With notifications, if someone uses a brand-critical hashtag

Hashtagify | Hashtag analyzer

Hashtagify is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a Hashtagify alternative.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - HashtagifyHashtag tracking tool - Hashtagify.

Sometimes when looking for relevant hashtags, you want to know what links different hashtags. Hashtagify helped find hashtags related to your original search as well as the top influencers for each hashtag.

What is a hashtag counter?

Hastagify provided a hashtag counter for Twitter, plus a wall showing hashtag posts and usage patterns. You could identify a hashtag's popularity, recent popularity, month trend, and week trend. The tool displayed the times of day your hashtag is most used, alongside hashtag performance info.

It was free for hashtag research, with other features available at a price. Other features included comparing hashtags, email alerts, influencer reports, and Instagram research.

Key features:

  • Related hashtag analysis – showed you related hashtags shared with the main hashtag
  • Top recent media – you could check recent tweets on the hashtag along with media and video
  • Usage pattern – the tool offered usage patterns that showed the last two months’ usage related to this hashtag
  • Top languages and spelling variants used

Here’s what a couple of social media experts had to say:

“We are a huge fan of Hashtagify and use it to find, analyse and amplify our tweets. It’s a great tool and is perfect for those wanting to gain better insights into their competitors and top influencers.

Their Hashtags Encylopedia is particularly useful as it provides advanced filtering, and therefore makes it even easier to find hashtags.”
Lilach Bullock (@lilachbullock) Founder of lilachbullock.comForbes Top 20 Women Social Media Power Influencer

“My favorite free hashtag tracking tool is Hashtagify because they have two very unique features: Hashtag relationship analysis and hashtag trends (which are independent of official Twitter trends). I use Hashtagify for trend tracking, content inspiration, keyword research and social media update optimization. It’s unbelievable that those features are free.”

Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) Founder of myBlogU.com, Brand Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas

*Hashtagify has both free and paid elements, so stick to the related hashtags and top influencers tabs if you're only interested in free data. 

RiteTag | Track my hashtag

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - Ritetag Hashtag tracking tools - RiteTag.

RiteTag is cool. It's like having your hashtag personal trainer. Once signed in, the tool judges whether the hashtags you’re using in your tweets are appropriate.

You can search a list of currently trending hashtags, with statistics including the number of tweets and retweets per hour. Plus, you can check out connections and stats for each hashtag you use.

Other features include the instant feedback option and integration of social media tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.

There’s also a Chrome extension which is unique when compared to similar tools. As with most of the tools on the list, you can use aspects of the tools for free, but you'll need to pay for advanced elements.

Key features:

  • Trending hashtags alerts – get email alerts if any new popular hashtags are emerging about your topic
  • Tag sets – group your hashtags so you can compare them on hashtag metrics like reach, retweets, impressions, exposure
  • Instant feedback – show the analytics of a hashtag as soon as you type it on Twitter (X) or any other platform.

Taggbox | Twitter hashtag tracker

Hashtag analytics and tracking - Screenshot of Taggbox's homepage

Taggbox is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly tools available to harness the power of UGC.

Taggbox makes it easy for businesses to aggregate, curate, and display UGC from a variety of sources. These include social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more. 

With easy-to-use dashboards and powerful filtering and moderation capabilities. Businesses can showcase the best UGC related to their brand, products, or services.

One of the standout features of Taggbox is its customization options. Choose from a range of pre-built templates and designs, or create your own using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor. 

This allows businesses to fully customize the look and feel of their UGC displays to match their branding and marketing goals.

Key features:

  • A range of advanced features can help businesses get even more value from their UGC. For example, Twitter (X) hashtag tracker can help businesses track and measure the impact of their UGC campaigns. This includes metrics like engagement rates, impressions, and more.
  • Tools for moderating UGC, maintains full control over content displayed on your website or social media channels. 
  • Advanced filtering capabilities, as well as the ability to manually approve or reject content.

Overall, if you're looking for a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use UGC tool, Taggbox is worth considering. 

Socialert | The hashtag tracker

Socialert is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a Socialert alternative.

Hashtag analytics and tracking - socialertHashtag tracking tool - Socialert.

Socialert was an easy-to-use tool for hashtag tracking that gave quick overviews of hashtag performance for free. Enter a hashtag, keyword, or @mention, to generate an automatic report to dig into social media platforms like Twitter. More than just hashtag tracking or keyword analytics, Socialert did event tracking, brand monitoring, and tracking competitors.

The filtering capability let you know what people were talking about around your brand on various social media channels. You could get a sample Twitter (X) report like the one above for free and for the rest you'd need to choose one of their paid options.

Key features:

  • Twitter (X) hashtag count for every day
  • Sentiment
  • Country distribution
  • Influencer ranking
  • Top active users
  • Most famous mentions
  • Most used keywords
  • URLs with Rank

Hashtags.org | Twitter trend analysis

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - hashtags-org Hastags.org - hashtag tracking tool.

Hashtags.org is the go-to place for general information on hashtags. It identifies top trending hashtags in different genres such as business, tech, entertainment, etc.

It also includes resources such as how to use hashtags, and general info about using Twitter (X). It’s a great learning resource for starting with hashtags and shows you what makes hashtag successful. Free and paid options are available.

Key features:

  • Definitions of hundreds of hashtags across genres
  • Simple analytics based on sample data
  • Option to add your own hashtag to their database

Trendsmap | Tweet count & top tweets

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - Trendsmap-2021Hashtag tracking tool - Trendsmap giving a bird's eye view.

If you want to see what the world is talking about, you need a Twitter trends count tool like Trendsmap. It gives you an instant overview.

In the free version, you can instantly see the current most popular hashtags in every country and region in the world. It's basically a Twitter (X) hashtag count. You can zoom in and out of the map to get the exact view that you want and the overall effect is visually appealing.

If you need to check popular or trending hashtags for a particular location. There’s a hashtag location map where you can see popular hashtags, users, and keywords. Provides data for the last 7 days. You get much more in-depth data and filtering options if you opt for one of their paid options.

Key features

  • Hashtag analysis – when you click on hashtag in the map, it will show you simple analytics including tweet count and top tweets. Helps you understand content around hashtags
  • Map zoom feature – you can zoom in/out to check what’s trending in a particular location
  • Historical hashtag history – check popular hashtags for any point in time in the last 7 days

TweetReach | Free hashtag tracking tool

TweetReach is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a TweetReach alternative.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - TweetReachTweetReach - Tweet performance hashtag tracking tool.

TweetReach provided a clear and simple way to understand the performance of your posts through visualizations. Free analytics – snapshots – captured activity for the last 100 tweets using your hashtag.

You could see the top contributors and download a PDF report. You'll be able to see your top hashtag’s estimated reach, impressions, and contributors. TweetReach’s paid version will also give you analytics from Instagram and Facebook, as well as Twitter (X).

Key features:

  • Ability to save reports as PDF
  • Relatively comprehensive breakdown of influencer engagement
  • Ability to gauge current virality of trend through time frame setting

TweetBinder | Social performance tool

TweetBinder is a great tool for getting a quick, top-level overview about your social performance. The visualizations are clear and easy to understand, ideal for those new to social media analytics.

An overall analytics tool shows the total tweets related to the conversations over time, the retweets, or the links. Effective visuals, breaks down tweets by type, including text tweets, replies, retweets or tweets with images. You get a free report of up to 2000 tweets from the last 7 days but beyond that you will need to pay. There are also analytics available to find hashtags on Instagram.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - TweetBinder TweetBinder gives an overiew of social performance.

Key features:

  • Clear, well-presented visualizations of hashtag analytics
  • 7 days of data available for free
  • Simple breakdown of posts in classify panel

TweetChat | Twitter chat tool

TweetChat is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a TweetChat alternative.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - Tweetchat TweetChat - The conversation starter.

TweetChat was good for engaging in Twitter chats, with the option to see what other popular chats were happening. You could directly post tweets, retweets, and likes on the hashtag using its interface.

Key features:

  • Highlight user – while doing tweetchat you may find some participants whom you want to interact with. You can highlight them to show their tweets in different color
  • Stop and start tracking hashtag – sometimes there may be a flood of tweets which can prove annoying. You can stop the streaming in that case and restart when you are ready
  • URL shortening – to shorten your URLs and save characters

#onemilliontweetmap | Overview of hashtag usage

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - onemilliontweetmap #onemilliontweetmap - global hashtag tracking tool.

Similar to Trendsmap, #onemilliontweetmap is great for getting an overview of hashtag usage across the world. I think what’s best about this tool is the level of detail it provides through intuitive filtering options. The map view is clear and from a visualization standpoint, you can see mentions take place as they happen. 

This hashtag tool provides a map with the most popular hashtags in a particular location. You can also view via a heatmap, with your own selected time ranges.

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - onemilliontweetmap heatmap #onemilliontweetmap - heatmap.

Key features:

  • Cluster view – helps user to show the cluster area where there is maximum noise about tweets. The red point shows the latest tweet
  • Keyword/hashtag search – the tool provides keywords and hashtag filters to search in specific locations
  • Time filter – helps to select the data up to the last 6 hours
  • Sentiment analysis - real-time analysis - positive, neutral, negative

Twitter (X) trends search | Free Twitter (X) hashtag analytics

How do you analyze trends on Twitter? Go to the source.

Don’t forget that Twitter (X) itself is a useful hashtag monitoring tool. Particularly when looking for emerging trends.

When you log in to Twitter (X) you can see trending hashtags on the left. You can change the location as well and you can see trending hashtags or keywords in your chosen area.

Because it's an inbuilt feature of Twitter, you don’t need to leave Twitter to know about trending hashtags and keywords. Also, when you click a trending hashtag, you can see tweets and other information with the standard Twitter interface. There are also a wide variety of advanced searches (rounded up in this great thread).

 

TWChat | Twitter (X) chat tracker

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - TWChat TWChat - Twitter chat tracker.

TWChat is another Twitter chat tracker that helps you track and contribute to Twitter chats more effectively. The home page contains a list of tweetchats that you can filter based on categories of your interest.

It has all the basic features needed to host and join any Twitter chat. The automatic hashtag additions and multiple tracking features make it a nice option for Twitter chat hosts. The ability to filter for questions is also a nice touch.

Key features

  • Mentor section – it shows you tweets from the tweetchat host in a different section - useful if they post questions that you need to check
  • Attach image – a unique feature of this tool that lets you add images along with your post
  • Show tweets with questions – so you can find the tweets you can answer and build reputation
  • Stats – provides stats for past tweetchats

TrackMyHashtag | Twitter (X) hashtag tracking

Hahstag analytics - A screenshot of TrackMyHashtag's landing page

TrackMyHashtag is a Twitter (X) hashtag-tracking tool

TrackMyHashtag is another useful tool, specifically designed to track hashtags on Twitter. It allows you to track any keyword, hashtag, or mention, in real time.

You can also request historical data as a report, so you can dig deep into any hashtag you like.

Their Tweet Counter / Hashtag Counter is especially useful if you only want to look into the raw numbers of a hashtag. It shows you how many Tweets used a specific hashtag within a set time. Plus average usage and a timeline.

Key features

  • Real-time hashtag tracking. Track hashtags and see the results in a live dashboard.
  • Historical hashtag data. Request historical hashtag data within a report.
  • Find key influencers. Discover the most influential people using your hashtags.
  • Measurement. Measure the reach of your campaign and monitor brand awareness around your hashtags.
  • Competition analyses. Analyze the messaging of your competitors and adapt your social media strategy to fit.

TweetDeck (X Pro) | The social media manager

 Hashtag analytics and tracking - TweetDeck TweetDeck - The social manager.

For Premium Twitter / X subscribers, TweetDeck (now known as X Pro) is a simple way to keep track of multiple hashtags, or conversations. With a simple interface and quick engagement options, TweetDeck is great for engaging in live discussions.

It’s not too bad for scheduling, but it's limited to Twitter. The platform connects to your Twitter account with an option to add multiple accounts.

Key features:

  • Track social media campaigns that you’re running for a client
  • Track multiple hashtag campaigns at the same time
  • Track multiple Twitter campaigns or accounts
  • Scheduling – if you need to tweet something important about hashtag campaigns

Talkwalker Social Listening

To take your hashtag tracking to another level, you need Talkwalker Social Listening. The complete platform enables you to track all your social channels. And boost performance with keyword and hashtag analysis. To learn more, or request a free trial, click below.




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