Search Marketing vs Tagging 101 Explained by Boxcar Marketing

I hate it when it happens. A question arises in a discussion or worse, in an article that needs to be written in no time, and yet, I don’t know the answer. I either shut up or research the topic enough to answer the question. What’s worse than barely understanding a question? It seems like a lot of people are quite comfortable with the concept, and talk freely about anything they don’t know, but I am not. So I turned to a few friends for help.

The question was: I heard someone say recently that search is out and tagging (folksonomies) are in .. What do you think about that?

Being a search expert, I needed to put tagging 101 in perspective with search. Not knowing enough about tagging, it was quite difficult to answer it. So I turn to my top geek friends Monique Trottier & James Sherrett from Boxcar Marketing for some help in the article I am about to write. The article is actually an interview about SEMPO Canada’s role (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization in Canada) and how it contributes to the growth of Search Marketing, coast to coast.

So first of, Monique put the definitions down:
Tagging: tagging systems have, over the past couple of years, been increasingly more popular. Tagging is basically a way to enable users to add keywords (or tags) to their blog posts, webpages, images, videos. The thing about tags is, I as a user gets to decide how to tag my post. It’s not dependent on me selecting from a list of categories that someone else has provided.

Folksonomy vs Taxonomy: in folksonomies--regular humans get to pick keywords that make sense to them, instead of taxonomies--where scientists or experts decide on a hierarchy and set of terms and we are forced to use those terms.

To see examples of tags, we can look at Darren Barefoot’s flickr page:
http://flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/817524718/
You’ll see in the right hand column a heading: Tags. He’s added in these keywords that help describe what the image is: raw, maple syrup, etc.

Here is another example:
You can see on Kate’s blog posts another example of tags:
http://www.mynameiskate.ca/2007/07/links-for-20-10.html
She’s got (tags: vancouver microsoft)

Blog search engines like Technorati use tags to improve search results. You can read more about tags here:
http://support.technorati.com/support/siteguide/tags

And then some explanation:
According to Monique Trottier, tagging systems have improved search, and in many cases, like on Flickr, I can add other tags to Darren’s tag list. So if I think the photo is also about “glass bottle”, I could add that tag. Then if I’m searching Flickr for “glass bottles”, Darren’s photo will show up in the search results. Tagging and search are thus highly related. In many ways, tagging helps increasing relevance in search results, which is what search is all about. So to respond to search is out and tagging is in: well, tagging is in because search is even more in. We can see from our webstats that 60-80% of the traffic comes from search engines. Tags allows us yet another way to optimize our blog posts, videos, images, etc.

The challenge is that although the tags are about folksonomies there are still standards about the correct way to use tags in order to reap the benefits of improved search. It works in places like Flickr where you enter tags and the tags are built into the search mechanism of that site. It’s more difficult in your own blog where you have to know the correct way to insert your tags.

I would say that tags are yet another way to optimize for search.

According to James Sherrett, President of Boxcar Marketing, the question of optimizing a website or webpage for search or tagging is setting up a false opposition. James would never recommend to someone that they optimize for search or for tagging or for voting on Digg, or for video indexing, if that ever arrives. Rather, he recommends that you build a strong website for people. That website should also cater to search engine bots and tagging systems, and anything that might come along. The point to remember is that in prioritizing all those different considerations, people have to come first.

Tagging is in fact very complimentary to search. It’s another way any one of us can enrich the information available about a website or webpage. That’s good for people and good for search bots. On the websites I see and manage, the new traffic continues to come from search. Tags can augment that traffic, but people love to search. And within search, people love to use Google.

For more on tagging, here is a really academic paper on tagging if you want more info.

Permalink /// Comments (4)

Comments

1. Thanks for consolidating all those comments about tagging Alex!

   Posted by Monique on 07/19 at 04:07 PM

2. Yeah, I really appreciate the time you spend explaining all this points. Without those examples we are lost. thanks a lot.

   Posted by Mac @ Motorcycle Fairing on 09/15 at 03:35 PM

3. Got it. Had some doubts about tags that were clarified here. Thanks a lot.

   Posted by Ray Ban Aviator on 10/02 at 08:06 AM

4. Thanks for sharing all the comments related to tagging Alex…

   Posted by SEO Services Outsourcing on 10/31 at 09:53 PM