On Tags and Google

I wrote this absurdly long email the other day about the proper use of tags. Specifically, it discussed tags being indexed by the site’s search engine and Google. I realized that for the most part, none of the recipients would fully read it, so I decided to strip out the site-specific and share it with the rest of the world. It was initially about twice this long. At least now I don’t feel like I wasted my time.

Searching tags on the site

Tags are a filter mechanism. They provide an easy way to list all articles that are tagged with the same word. In this way, they serve as an ad-hoc extension to categories that allow websites to add additional category-level organization without altering the existing architecture. This is handy because sites generally do better with a condensed taxonomy. You don