I'm not a fisherman, but I do like to fish. Well, I like to catch fish, and there's really only one way to do that. A lot of people think that by baiting a hook, throwing it in the water, and letting it sit there, they're going to catch a fish. It may happen, or it may not, and that explains why I added tags to my site.

Trust me, it'll make sense in a minute.

A while ago, I wrote how I was amazed to have a few hundred links in TTLB. The Truth Laid Bear's Ecosystem calculates how many links a site has from other sites in the community. Almost all of those sites are pointing to the .org top-level domain, but it got me thinking about how we create communities, and sift through them with search.

On Monday, I said something about one design element here at MacStansbury.com, the m-dash. I made an off-hand remark about how I've gone through and added tags to every page. Going through the archive, I've had a difficult time putting in the necessary tags, because I've found out that I'm really not that focused. Those who know me in real or sorta-real life are nodding their heads in acknowledgment.

The reason I added tags was to help the two other forms of search on this site: the built-in search box (read about this here) and the related posts plugin. The search function brings you strait keyword analysis, and the related posts uses a form of guesstimation. The only form of search I use that doesn't come automatically is from the Ultimate Tag Warrior.

I was thinking about this, last week, as I saw another blog a guy had, and he added tags, but it appeared that he wasn't focusing on the issues he deals with on a regular basis, he was using them for Technorati hits. Using the rel="tag", you can make any keyword a link, but I see almost everybody using tags not as a way to create better accessibility in a site, but as a way to get the Technorati love.

For instance, on another blog I wrote a while back, I simply added "Red America" as a tag. Within minutes, Technorati was sending me a steady stream of readers. I used that tag once, and it didn't aid any of my readers in finding relevant topics in my archives. I was using it as most people do, as a way to game the meme sites. Since the very quick end of the Washington Post experiment, that tag's been used 3 or 4 times. I seriously doubt anybody cares about it anymore, and the Technorati results show it.

I'll say this: if I have a site dedicated to Applescript tutorials, I would want my site to use both the internal function of linking to the tags at my site, as well as telling Technorati that I am using this as a tag, as this would be a focus of my site. Complaining about some one-time event (how's about YearlyKos, or MacWorld '06), and the tag is rarely useful. If it's a popular tag, then you'll be hard-pressed to get the Technorati love, and if you only use it once, what's the point in cluttering up your page?

Like I said, some people want to throw that bait out there, and catch a hit. It's true, people search for keywords on Technorati, and you might get those hits for it. More likely, though, you'll get indexed by Google or Yahoo!, and they'll send you traffic, because you've spent the time cultivating relevant information devoted to the things you've tagged. This is why I avoided tagging my posts before, and why I added them now.

Just for the record, Technorati, for whatever reason, no longer indexes this site. I don't know why, it could be another problem with a plugin, I'm not sure. I'm not really worried about it. The tags are on this site to help you find similar concepts (say, posts related to K2) that may not end up in related items or other searches. If you didn't have tags, you'd never know that this post and this post both have to do with programming.

Tags are important to your site, but Technorati is just a bonus. I'm firmly convinced Technorati would work more efficiently if everybody would follow this as a guide, but I'm not going to ever think anyone would. Too many people love fishing for clicks.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-10-10T22:18:53.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
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