Comments on: Are Tags Working?

By: David Szpunar

David Szpunar — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:03:28 +0000

I’ve read a few of your posts on tagging vs. categories, and so far I’ve found, when I started tagging my posts with WordPress 2.3 (I installed Simple Tags and love the auto-completion and ability to bulk-tag old posts), the biggest use I have for them is giving me an easy way to link related content. Thus I tag with this in mind, since each post will display “related posts” at the bottom that have matching tags. It keeps my tags very specific, because I want posts about Google or Gmail to pull up other similar posts, but I wouldn’t use “Web2.0″ as a tag because posts with that tag aren’t necessarily all related.

I am not (yet at least) displaying a tag cloud or any user interface to the tags (they’re not listed with each post either), it’s just an internal thing. But I also haven’t tagged a lot of my older posts yet.

By: It’s Blogroll Cleaning Time : The Blog Herald

It’s Blogroll Cleaning Time : The Blog Herald — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:59:53 +0000

[...] I’ve talked a lot about the difference between the blogger’s perspective of their blogs versus the reality of the reader’s experience and n…, which often don’t line up. Blogroll links may be put there because the blogger thinks they [...]

By: Are Tags Working For You? « Lorelle on WordPress

Are Tags Working For You? « Lorelle on WordPress — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:41:23 +0000

[...] Are Tags Working For You? I asked this question on the Blog Herald: Are Tags Working? [...]

By: What Is the Return on Your Investment in Social Media? : The Blog Herald

What Is the Return on Your Investment in Social Media? : The Blog Herald — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:38:34 +0000

[...] about Technorati and all those tags you smeared all over your blog, which you thought would bring you a lot of traffic from Technorati. Does it [...]

By: Climbing Out of Category Hell « Internet Duct Tape

Climbing Out of Category Hell « Internet Duct Tape — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:45:58 +0000

[...] “Tags, however, are more like your blog’s index words. They are micro-categories. Do you use them when you visit a blog? I’m not and I’m wondering why.” — Lorelle [...]

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:10:44 +0000

I think it it depends on the context. I recently switched back from using tags (UTW) on my main blog, because I found it difficult to think of consistent and relevant tags. Having broader categories has been more useful in terms of organisation. However, I do still use tagging (Simple Tagging plugin) on a sub-blog which indexes and recommends fiction online. In this case, I use a set number of pre-defined tags for genre etc. so visitors can get to information they are interested in. When I use other sites which have similar reviews, that’s how I prefer to browse, but I confess I’ve never used technorati tag search, or given much consideration to technorati tagging my own posts.

By: Jermayn Parker

Jermayn Parker — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 05:42:19 +0000

Personally no I dont use them and find them annoying

By: Lincoln

Lincoln — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:29:27 +0000

I find my writing content tends to overlap different themes. I might write about blogging, which gets placed in my blogging category, but then I could also be discussing issues regarding blogging, writing better, finding love through blogging, etc. Tags make it easy to index content that refuses to stay one dimensional.

In addition to bringing in more SE traffic, tag clouds also give me a good feel for what my passions are. It’s almost a psychological analysis of what topics really matter to me. So far, “women ” seem to top the list. :D

Tags also make it possible to generate “related posts” link. I’m using the one inbuilt in UTW and it’s worked great, improving the stickiness of my blog.

I think the major problem regarding tags is that we simply have too many novices who don’t know how to properly tag their content. This really got pushed on us too quickly without giving us appropriate time to understand how it works, and how to make sensible use of it. I was almost tempted to flip off the whole tags phenomena because it was frustrating and slowed down my blog writing. I’m glad I stuck with it though.

By: mpb

mpb — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:03:48 +0000

I get a few referrers from Technorati and WordPress tags.

I used Technorati tags in the past so people would be able to look for additional sources of information on the topic of the post. This was because at first there wasn’t much else to look for at the blog and because it was set up as a resource for people to find health and environment info.

Having the categories at each post refer to all WP blogs wasn’t useful (and surprising at first), so I try to point people to the sidebar categories which are blog specific and I use the search site tags.

The site search tags are now in between “find other stuff here written previously” and keywords. I really think they should be keywords, but that is a research bias. Keywords would fit future posts, too.

One problem currently with tags is that it isn’t possible to know what if any standardized tags there are (plural or singular; two words, dashed words, one word; etc.) and which of my tags were used previously without a lot of work. I like Connotea and Flickr and del.icio.us which display one’s tags automatically. Some blog clients, like Zoundry, will store previous tags used on posts.

As a reader, I infrequently use categories unless I’m interested in the writer. Hardly anyone uses site search tags but I rely on them at Lorelle’s. Once in great while I searched Technorati tags but not very fruitfully unless there were very specific tags such as “Yup’ik” It was more useful to search there for blog tags (keywords) rather than post tags. That is, I’m not looking so much for individual posts but for blogs related to certain classes of information.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:52:59 +0000

So now I’m reading and learning: Google analytics uses a javascript that spiders and bots do not activate. I guess this means that this means I’m seeing actual visitors.