Tags vs. Categories vs. Keywords: Are Tags Better Than Search?
Technorati offers a lot of tag-related gadgets. But what are they good for and how do you use them?
Take this tag thingy, for example. I would like my blogs to be associated with my name, Mark McLaren. Does this tag thingy help?
Tag helper (like Hamburger Helper) from Technorati
Any time I want to use “mclaren” as a tag, I should insert the code supplied by Technorati that produces the following in my web page:
mclaren
Okay. I think I see what’s going on. The word “mclaren” is now a Technorati tag. How does this benefit me unless a page from my website shows up on the Technorati mclaren tag page? I see no real benefit. And all Technorati has to say about it is
See your posts here
To contribute to this page, include this code in your blog post:
Using a Technorati tag like this definitely helps Technorati, because, if everyone does so, it produces a ton of links pointing at the Technorati website. At least someone benefits.
WordPress.com has some good tag mojo goin’. I mean, they are doing something a bit simpler, and thus more useful.
They put tags that people have been using most on all WordPress.com blogs over the past few hours in a column down the right side of their home page. This gives you a snapshot of what people are blogging about. Click on one of those tags, “life” for example, and you get a page listing blogs talking about “life” — i.e. tagging their posts with the tag “life”. Also listed on the WordPress.com page are related tags, and a link to the “life” tag page on several other social networking sites that use a tagging system.
Finding blogs this way has nothing to do with using a search engine like Google. One of the best things tags are good for in this context is helping you find good information by narrowing the scope of what you are looking in. If WordPress.com is a community whose goals and ideals and knowledge-base you resonate with, then looking there using tags can be a whole lot more efficient and productive (or spontaneous and serendipitous, if that’s your bag, baby) than doing a search for “life” on Google.
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