I just commented on Jared’s blog about tagging vs. categorizing and I thought it deserved a whole new post.
Here is a quote from Micheal:
Categories are is a finite range of static containers, into which you pour your content.
Tags are fluid, dynamic and can be entirely different from one end of your blog to the other.
And another from Mathew:
categories give a very general feel for the content, and only a few categories should be used per post (say randomly, 4 per post). Whereas tags give more specific detail, including maybe a few vaguely related tags so that the post shows up on a wider tag search, in the same way as you may do a fairly non-specfic search in google before narrowing down. Tags per post can also number a fairly large amount as it doesnt add more pish to the structure of the blog.
And of course I agree.
Just because you have more detailed categories doesn’t mean you are tagging. Especially if you created those “tagsâ€? before you started tagging/writing your post.
Tagging is limitless; it describes the post in such detail that a broad description like Movies, Microsoft, and Apple cannot be considered enough of a tag. When I see tags I see a lot of words that detail the entire post. For example, this post, I will most likely tag it as Tags, Wordpress, Jared, Plugins, Opinion, maybe some more, but if I tagged it as Blogging, Opinion it wouldn’t be enough to describe the post. It would be enough to categorize the post but not to describe it enough for someone to find in a search.
Searching is the main reason to tag. I could go on and on with analogies and descriptions but you should know that tagging helps people search and find. Finding things that they normally wouldn’t be interested in is the best part. If a user came and read my posts under ‘Safari‘ they might want to read about ‘Apple‘ which then could take them to a numerous of other places like ‘Camino‘ or ‘OSx‘. Limiting your tags limits the range of how far a user/reader can go.
Right now when I upload my pictures of Avery to flickr and name them all “Averyâ€?, just to save time, is that a tag? No. Just because flickr calls it a tag doesn’t mean it is a tag. I just categorized all those photos to one group called “Averyâ€?, because whether she is at the pool, park, movie, running, singing or skydiving they all can only be found under the tag Avery?
Like I have said before this is a preference of the owner/writer/blogger, if they want to tag/categorize there posts in broad subjects and call them tags that is their preference; even if I don’t agree with it.
