What’s a Technorati tag??

At the moment, you may notice that some posts on this website have something at the bottom that says,”technorati tags”. What in the world are those, and who cares?

Well, one thing at a time. What is Technorati? Technorati is a site that tracks and indexes weblogs, like this one. The site was founded by David Sifry, who has his own blog called Sifrey’s Alerts. Technorati claims to track over 25 million websites.

Ok, so what are tags? Well, in this context they’re kind of like subjects or categories. In fact, Technorati uses the categories in this blog as tags. But those categories are only so helpful (in fact, one of these days I should probably improve them). Tags make things more specific,

and can link you to others who are blogging on the same thing, even if you only mention the topic once.

Technorati isn’t the only site using tags. Flickr, the popular photo sharing site, also uses tags to make photos easier to find. For example, if I type in “Mexico music” I get photos like this one (thanks to pulpolux for the photo).

It works great for photos, and it works ok for blog entries, which are far more subjective and easier to actually search than a photo.

So, what are the advantages and uses of tags? Most obviously, you can click the links and find other people blogging on related topics. You can even use the tags to search for related entries in your own blog (I don’t really have too many yet, but if I did). You can see how many people are talking about a topic – for example, what are the hot tags in the last hour? You can search tags, for example, see what a search on Mexican culture brings up. In other words, you may be able to find what you’re interested in, and find what’s being talked about, faster and easier. Hopefully, someone will find something helpful on this blog that they wouldn’t have found otherwise.

The downsides? Well, when you use a Technorati tag, you’re promoting their website, and people leave your website. At the Technorati website, they’ll find related posts but they may also find worthless or even bad posts, from people just trying to get your attention. Like much on the internet, the tags rely on the honour system, and can be abused.

So, I’m not sold-on Technorati tags, but they are interesting and worth trying out. In a few months or years of trial and error there will be improvements and better ways to index things.

I decided to give tags another try after reading What are These “tags” All Over the Web?, a post by fellow missionary Josiah Ritchie. Thanks again, man! On this site, I’ve been using a plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis. Thanks, Christine!