Instagram’s website now lets users search hashtags, locations

Instagram, which revolutionized the picture clicking and sharing experience on mobile but hasn’t done much after that, is taking steps to ensure that it’s web interface, a sidekick to the acclaimed mobile app, can actually live up to its brand name.

Instagram’s website is finally catching up to its mobile app. The application allows users to snap photos and share them with friends, as well as apply filters to add artistic flare. Start typing in a search term, and a drop-down menu gives you the option to choose between searching for hashtags, locations or users.

In the background is Instagram’s new search engine, which the company has promised will “dramatically” improve the quality of the results it surfaces.

Readers: What do you think of this new feature from Instagram? “Instagram.com allows you to view Instagram content from anywhere, and brings the Web at large into the Instagram community”. As of today, you can search Instagram on the web.

You can now look up anything from hashtags, locations and usernames right from the desktop.

In the absence of web search, several third-party alternatives have popped up over the years, such as Websta and FindGram.

On posts that users see on the web – either on Instagram.com or embedded on other sites – links to hashtags and location geotags will redirect to a page that shows the top posts for those tags, based on the number of likes. Given Instagram’s ever-growing popularity, the only surprise about this move is that it took so long to implement.