Comments on: Functional Debate: Categories vs. Tags

By: Categories vs tags - katagorier kontra nøgleord « Tech.BusinessClass.dk

Categories vs tags - katagorier kontra nøgleord « Tech.BusinessClass.dk — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:12:44 +0000

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By: Frank C

Frank C — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:41:36 +0000

One of the interesting things I’ve noted so far as tags go is that Google seems to love them. I have a number of niche marketing blogs and often the tag page will rank higher than the actual post(s).

By: SpiderGuy

SpiderGuy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:19:38 +0000

I like the “folders” and “postit notes” analogy. So it follows that an article would generally only have one category (a physical page can only be in one folder) but you can stick lots of notes (tags) to it.

By: casas rurales en guipúzcoa

casas rurales en guipúzcoa — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:10:49 +0000

Tags for a blog site is also good for automated content such as “related articles.” This way, you don’t have to manually type it up. It can be done with categories too, however not as accurate since two articles on the same topic may have totally different word choice in the title.

By: Chicago Breast Cancer

Chicago Breast Cancer — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:25:20 +0000

I agree, good practice is to review both categories and tags to effectively sort your data (whether it be a blog, a picture database or video database). I also think this is common sense because it can categorized something and then to sort within the category you can use tags… Regards!

By: Stephanie M. Cockerl

Stephanie M. Cockerl — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:20:44 +0000

In my experience, the question of categories vs. tags or vice-versa doesn’t really arise unless there is some major re-org of the blog, such as a blog migration from one platform to another. In the end, its good practice to review both categories and tags and see if they are truly relevant to the site.

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:31:47 +0000

Michael,
I think what you are proposing is the ideal way it should work, but Ernest hit the nail on the head regarding platforms. That may be where some of the confusion lies.

For instance our Movable Type system has options for categories and tags but they all end up in pretty much the same place. When posting an entry I can put something in either the category or the tag field and it will create a new category. (These all then get listed as tags as the bottom of my posts.)

Despite this there is still a way to impose the structure you suggest. On our Community Outreach site I configured these to be primary and secondary categories. When you look at the Categories index you will see that the secondary ones (tags) are indented. In this way we can even include our 5 core categories in our menu, like the TOC you describe. The trick in our system is just to go to the categories control panel and make sure and secondary tags are assigned to a parent category.

So while systems and nomenclature may vary, I think from a structural standpoint your framework recommendation can be a great navigational aid for users.

By: Ernest Koe

Ernest Koe — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:19:05 +0000

I think this is mostly sound, but let me suggest that at the core, this distinction is largely arbitrary and bound to a specific platform or product. I think the original question was directed at Wordpress. Other CMSes may not frame it the same way. Me? I think they are ontologically the same and the distinction arises from our functional choices. That said, blog ‘tags’ and ‘categories’ seem to be a universally accepted paradigm; and as you suggest, use categories to put things in big buckets, use tags to freely identify items.