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We at BlogCatalog are working hard on taking tagging and searching to the next level and scraping as much tag data as we can from posts.
we have even put tags to use to filter user's neighborhoods as you an see at: http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/AndyBeard/neighborhoods
Again, Thank you. Your feedback has been tremendously insightfull
We at BlogCatalog are working hard on taking tagging and searching to the next level and scraping as much tag data as we can from posts.
we have even put tags to use to filter user's neighborhoods as you an see at: http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/AndyBeard/neighborhoods
Again, Thank you. Your feedback has been tremendously insightfull
Robert Scoble was recently comparing the accuracy or usefulness of results possible with Google Blogsearch and Technorati.
Part of his criteria is how fast the data is being picked up. I suppose a polling system might not be as fast as if you have a ping system.
You guys in some ways have an advantage in having a smaller index to start with. No splogs to filter out
Robert Scoble was recently comparing the accuracy or usefulness of results possible with Google Blogsearch and Technorati.
Part of his criteria is how fast the data is being picked up. I suppose a polling system might not be as fast as if you have a ping system.
You guys in some ways have an advantage in having a smaller index to start with. No splogs to filter out
Thanks for the case study mention :)
There are quite a few limitations with the WordPress hosted blogs, such as widgets, nofollow commenting, and as you mention the duplicate feeds (I could go on, as you know). I have a domain, it's just a matter of extracting the proverbial and doing it! And also the fear of losing the "crutch"...
One thing that IS great about WordPress is the "categories" (which I have renamed "tags") and it actually drives a fair amount of traffic my way by being more specific, than just lumping something in say "internet". These are indexed nicely in Google too :)
Thanks for the follow up - the speed of their response is certainly impressive.
Thanks for the case study mention :)
There are quite a few limitations with the WordPress hosted blogs, such as widgets, nofollow commenting, and as you mention the duplicate feeds (I could go on, as you know). I have a domain, it's just a matter of extracting the proverbial and doing it! And also the fear of losing the "crutch"...
One thing that IS great about WordPress is the "categories" (which I have renamed "tags") and it actually drives a fair amount of traffic my way by being more specific, than just lumping something in say "internet". These are indexed nicely in Google too :)
Thanks for the follow up - the speed of their response is certainly impressive.
You are one sneaky linker, good sir; thanks for that, and for keeping us up to date on BC .
I'm going to have to check out BlogCatalog; although I can't see adding another avatar widget. :(
-j
You are one sneaky linker, good sir; thanks for that, and for keeping us up to date on BC .
I'm going to have to check out BlogCatalog; although I can't see adding another avatar widget. :(
-j
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[link removed]
1. Don't you think that under an intelligent (semantic if you will) Internet tags should not be needed? The search engines and other communication platforms should be able to organize, filter and serve information purely based on the content.
2. The tags require an extra work from the user, and they might also be used for selfish interests (i.e. tagging a post with a hot keywords just to get more exposure).
Let me know what do you think of those 2 points. Also do you think in the future everything is going to be tagged?
3. Tags clutter the environment.
1. Don't you think that under an intelligent (semantic if you will) Internet tags should not be needed? The search engines and other communication platforms should be able to organize, filter and serve information purely based on the content.
2. The tags require an extra work from the user, and they might also be used for selfish interests (i.e. tagging a post with a hot keywords just to get more exposure).
Let me know what do you think of those 2 points. Also do you think in the future everything is going to be tagged?
3. Tags clutter the environment.
Tags honestly take very little additional work. Even if it takes me 2 or 3 hours to write a long blog post, it rarely takes me longer than 2 minutes to tag it.
Selfish Interests? You mean like not having to load up your content with lots of specific keywords because you can add them at the end in the form of tags pointing to highly relevant content?
I am sure you will forgive me for all the additional terms I rank for just because I include a few additional tags on the end of a post that create better optimized versions of the same content for a particular keyword phrase.
Good SEO tactics are not selfish, they are bringing users into contact with the information they were looking for, and tagging can be just as important as selecting a title with good keywords, because each tag on my blog creates a page with that keyword in the title.
Tags clutter an environment in the same way when you walk into an old library they have rank upon rank of filing systems, and all the books in various categorized shelves.
How can you categorize books?
By Author
By Subject
By Title
By Date Published
By Publisher
All time best seller lists
Recent Best seller lists
Yearly Best seller lists
Highest rating by the press
Highest rating by user review
Highest rating from one particular reviewer
Most reviews in the press
Most user reviews
The list goes on, but all of those are valuable
Clutter? Tags can be implemented in a variety of ways. Did you know Techcrunch is using Ultimate Tag Warrior?
They are not using it as effectively as they could. As the backend of tagging becomes part of Wordpress, we will see all kinds of nice interfaces, and more users will use them as a form of navigation to related content.
Tags certainly seem to provide me with much more accurate related content links on each page and in my feeds, and I rank extremely well against older and more linked to domains writing about the same content, both on blogsearch and the main Google search index.
Tags honestly take very little additional work. Even if it takes me 2 or 3 hours to write a long blog post, it rarely takes me longer than 2 minutes to tag it.
Selfish Interests? You mean like not having to load up your content with lots of specific keywords because you can add them at the end in the form of tags pointing to highly relevant content?
I am sure you will forgive me for all the additional terms I rank for just because I include a few additional tags on the end of a post that create better optimized versions of the same content for a particular keyword phrase.
Good SEO tactics are not selfish, they are bringing users into contact with the information they were looking for, and tagging can be just as important as selecting a title with good keywords, because each tag on my blog creates a page with that keyword in the title.
Tags clutter an environment in the same way when you walk into an old library they have rank upon rank of filing systems, and all the books in various categorized shelves.
How can you categorize books?
By Author
By Subject
By Title
By Date Published
By Publisher
All time best seller lists
Recent Best seller lists
Yearly Best seller lists
Highest rating by the press
Highest rating by user review
Highest rating from one particular reviewer
Most reviews in the press
Most user reviews
The list goes on, but all of those are valuable
Clutter? Tags can be implemented in a variety of ways. Did you know Techcrunch is using Ultimate Tag Warrior?
They are not using it as effectively as they could. As the backend of tagging becomes part of Wordpress, we will see all kinds of nice interfaces, and more users will use them as a form of navigation to related content.
Tags certainly seem to provide me with much more accurate related content links on each page and in my feeds, and I rank extremely well against older and more linked to domains writing about the same content, both on blogsearch and the main Google search index.
What about the real evidence of people tagging stuff? Technorati is the tag engine by excellence, yet if I am not wrong less than 10% of the Top 100 Most linked blogs are using tags activitely.
Regarding the selfish use. You said "You mean like not having to load up your content with lots of specific keywords because you can add them at the end in the form of tags pointing to highly relevant content?"
Well I think under an efficient network people neither should have to load content with keywords nor to add tags at the end of posts.
They should just write for humans, that is it.
Just think about meta tags. In the early days search engines would give a lot of important to the meta description and meta keywords tags. Unfortunale people started abusing them, stuffing keywords that were not completely or not at all relevant to the content, just to get a few extra hits or rank better. The result is we all know, meta tags are almost useless from SEO point of view today.
What will prevent tags from following that path?
It should be possible just to write content for humans, but humans can make stupid mistakes just as easily as Google algorithms.
As an example (and it was corrected and they did apologise), Article Marketer once knocked back one of my articles about duplicate content and article marketing, claiming it was not an SEO article. That was a professional reviewer though maybe a new employee with other specialities.
Whilst in theory algorithms should be able to pick up every possible word association, human tagging helps.
At the same time there is a danger of using too many tags directly to Technorati, which is why I always suggest using internal tagging.
Also note that categories are picked up as tags by blog search engines, and most blog use some categories, but that is not using tagging to its full potential.
What about the real evidence of people tagging stuff? Technorati is the tag engine by excellence, yet if I am not wrong less than 10% of the Top 100 Most linked blogs are using tags activitely.
Regarding the selfish use. You said "You mean like not having to load up your content with lots of specific keywords because you can add them at the end in the form of tags pointing to highly relevant content?"
Well I think under an efficient network people neither should have to load content with keywords nor to add tags at the end of posts.
They should just write for humans, that is it.
Just think about meta tags. In the early days search engines would give a lot of important to the meta description and meta keywords tags. Unfortunale people started abusing them, stuffing keywords that were not completely or not at all relevant to the content, just to get a few extra hits or rank better. The result is we all know, meta tags are almost useless from SEO point of view today.
What will prevent tags from following that path?
It should be possible just to write content for humans, but humans can make stupid mistakes just as easily as Google algorithms.
As an example (and it was corrected and they did apologise), Article Marketer once knocked back one of my articles about duplicate content and article marketing, claiming it was not an SEO article. That was a professional reviewer though maybe a new employee with other specialities.
Whilst in theory algorithms should be able to pick up every possible word association, human tagging helps.
At the same time there is a danger of using too many tags directly to Technorati, which is why I always suggest using internal tagging.
Also note that categories are picked up as tags by blog search engines, and most blog use some categories, but that is not using tagging to its full potential.
Good article
Good article
Oh and tag you are it. See blog for details.
Oh and tag you are it. See blog for details.
Google isn't very forthcoming regarding followed links from user generated content, and at the end of the day BC isn't VC or internet mega corporation funded.
Any dip in traffic for search that might be caused not due to juice leaks, but based upon where they link to has to be explored.
It is not something I am happy about but I am still a realist.
I should also add as Tony will also say, BC isn't about leaching them for links, but the community
Google isn't very forthcoming regarding followed links from user generated content, and at the end of the day BC isn't VC or internet mega corporation funded.
Any dip in traffic for search that might be caused not due to juice leaks, but based upon where they link to has to be explored.
It is not something I am happy about but I am still a realist.
I should also add as Tony will also say, BC isn't about leaching them for links, but the community
Sure there are other options, but those are similar to almost every blog directory, and there is no rule stating you can't stick a nofollow on the link, just like with most blog directories.
I have had close to 3000 visits now from my profile page alone, compared to maybe 50 from Dmoz.
I should really work to improve my profile page as it has had many more views, 12500, than visits
I am only included in a couple of other directories, e.g. Blog Top Sites - I assure you I get more visits from my BC directory page than from Blogflux (who merged with BTS)
Then there are other traffic opportunities, the dashboard etc.
Plus I am not a highly active user, this is all passive traffic. I know it is a 2 way street, but friendly interaction with other bloggers brings subscribers, regular readers, commenters and additional 3rd party traffic from social media.
It also brings links from other bloggers, and I link to them, either in posts or in comments.
Don't forget on your blog to include a notice that you nofollow comment links... how dishonest.
If you are only joining Blogcatalog for the link juice then you are truly missing out on what they have to offer. Blogcatalog is more than a place to get a link. They offer a place where you can connect with other bloggers and share your passions. To me that's more valuable than a link.
Also I noticed that Rose owns a blog directory and a blogging forum and Sez Who shows that this isn't the only place where she has denigrated BlogCatalog. This feedback on a post that's over a year old seems very suspicious to me.
Sure there are other options, but those are similar to almost every blog directory, and there is no rule stating you can't stick a nofollow on the link, just like with most blog directories.
I have had close to 3000 visits now from my profile page alone, compared to maybe 50 from Dmoz.
I should really work to improve my profile page as it has had many more views, 12500, than visits
I am only included in a couple of other directories, e.g. Blog Top Sites - I assure you I get more visits from my BC directory page than from Blogflux (who merged with BTS)
Then there are other traffic opportunities, the dashboard etc.
Plus I am not a highly active user, this is all passive traffic. I know it is a 2 way street, but friendly interaction with other bloggers brings subscribers, regular readers, commenters and additional 3rd party traffic from social media.
It also brings links from other bloggers, and I link to them, either in posts or in comments.
Don't forget on your blog to include a notice that you nofollow comment links... how dishonest.
If you are only joining Blogcatalog for the link juice then you are truly missing out on what they have to offer. Blogcatalog is more than a place to get a link. They offer a place where you can connect with other bloggers and share your passions. To me that's more valuable than a link.
Also I noticed that Rose owns a blog directory and a blogging forum and Sez Who shows that this isn't the only place where she has denigrated BlogCatalog. This feedback on a post that's over a year old seems very suspicious to me.
I don't need to announce that my blogs comments are nofollow. All Wordpress blogs are nofollow unless you join the No Nofollow movement, which I may just do. People are NOT commenting on my blog to get a link back though. They are however submitting to BlogCatalog to increase their PR.
Seeing how you mentioned the Blog Directory I'm editor of you will notice that they do not use the nofollow attribute. Good for them and every other directory that shares PR.
Sandra I commented on this post because it states BlogCatalog shares the link love. Well not anymore they don't.
One moment they have it, then they don't then they do.
Make up your mind BC.
I don't need to announce that my blogs comments are nofollow. All Wordpress blogs are nofollow unless you join the No Nofollow movement, which I may just do. People are NOT commenting on my blog to get a link back though. They are however submitting to BlogCatalog to increase their PR.
Seeing how you mentioned the Blog Directory I'm editor of you will notice that they do not use the nofollow attribute. Good for them and every other directory that shares PR.
Sandra I commented on this post because it states BlogCatalog shares the link love. Well not anymore they don't.
One moment they have it, then they don't then they do.
Make up your mind BC.