Tagging – the next big thing?
Tagging is the new hip Web 2.0 buzzword. Seems like everyone is testing an aspect of it, from Amazon to Burpee. But what is it and why is it so great?
Tagging is not actually new … Tagging is simply a method of associating a series of keywords with a particular product or entry in a CMS or blog so that it shows up on different search phrases. This makes sure that relevant results are shown for searches and not just results that only happen to contain the phrase in the free text.
Tagging goes back many years into the realms of document management and large organisations. Huge libraries of electronic documents were committed to document management systems, and, although the text was often indexed, there were some elements that couldn’t be – for example video footage. The idea of META data was born which essentially consisted of a bunch of extra fields that were completed when a document was submitted and could be updated over time. One such META data field was “keywords”.
It doesn’t take much to see that META and keywords became part of the core web structure because part of the language reference includes a META tag for the header area of the HTML page called (you guessed it) “keywords”. Hence we adopted the ability to tag documents on the World Wide Web.
However, META keywords were subsequently abused to death by spammers and unethical types and so were downgraded and dropped from being used by search engines as anything meaningful.
But now, they have been reborn as tags and instead of hiding in the page definition they are now taking centre stage and are being used to influence page content and search results.
For ecommerce applications these are a great benefit as it allows store owners to provide better search tools and make it easier for their shoppers to shop on their site. For blogs, they help to create a relevancy matrix and allow people to move around them. For social environments such as last.fm they allow the community to influence the actual tagging and create weighted keyword maps of the content on the site. The nett result of high volumes of contributors creates a normalising effect of the minority who might seek to use the tags for spam.
Tagging is good, but it’s not really new. The pioneers of the web have been including tagging facilities since the year dot but the new hype creates a popularity that keywords have not had since the mid-90s. For the early adopters, the extension of their applications to “Web 2.0 tagging” (essentially just another way of displaying the data that’s already there) is very easy. However, how we best use the tags in a public way is still evolving and the larger players are yet to release any information on the topic to suggest how or if tags have benefited them. In my view, anything that helps people find what they are looking for is a good thing, so tags will be here to stay.
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