Pro Blog Design

Comments discussion on "Why Tags Are Better Than Categories"

1. 

   Michael said:

   I’ve been using categories like tags for a while now. I have been since before tags were supported by WordPress, I didn’t see any harm in it and didn’t want to use a 3rd party plugin to do the same because I didn’t like the idea of having all that content in the hands of the future of that plugin (whether or not it would become no longer supported).

   I’ve considered converting all my categories to tags but I don’t know how I would cleanly do it (in terms of past posts).
2. 

   Slevi said:

   Just a little hint: You don’t need to install the plugin, by default wordpress I think since 2.5 but might have been 2.3 redirects all old permalink structures to new :).

   As for categories on slevi they’ve always been a mess but lately I’ve been trying to categorize them down a bit and with wordpress 2.6 I’ll throw in some of the early changes reflecting that.

   In general I managed to narrow it down to “health”, “sci-tech”, “entertainment” and “gaming”. Then there’s always going to be the group of miscellaneous which pops up at times but simply doesn’t get enough attention to pick up a prominent role.

   Each of the categories do have some subcategories but those are limited to specific occasions only when I know I’ll be writing more about that particular subcategory.

   The rest is all going through tagging now and I’m glad it is. Reduced the number of main categories to 4 with several subcategories and some on the side sticking to roughly 15 commonly used categories in total. Whereas the amount of tags is going through the roof, in the last 4 weeks 200 new tags have been added and I’m already way over a thousand in total.

   The popular tags are highlighted on the index page for now, in the future they’ll be getting placed down towards the footer instead. Not sure whether I’ll create a tag page to display them all or not along, wordpress doesn’t really handle the large number of tags well currently and tends to time out on loading them :P.
   • 

     miketopher said:

     i had my category base set as i.e / “hello”

     so when i go to mysite.com/hello/free-content

     i get a list of posts which i posted in free-content category….

     i changed my category base from hello, to goodbye. and now when i go to
     mysite.com/hello/free-content “my now old cat base”

     instead of forwarding me to
     mysite.com/goodbye/free-content “my now new cat base”

     i get forwarded to
     mysite.com/free-content-OneOfThePostsInTheFreeContentCat

     not only is my new cat base, “goodbye” not in the url, but there is no cat base at all and it combines the cat “Free-Content” with one of the posts piece of url…. im confused.. any idea?
     thanks a ton!
   • 

     miketopher said:

     ok so i just realized that the post in which i was being redirected to upon using my old permalink url. the permalink itself was message up… errrr.

     the post i was redirected was mysite.com/free-content-the-post-name

     i must have added the words free-content to the url in the New Post page.. by accident.. um i hope i make sense.. ok well ill get to what matters most….

     now i change my permalink category base and when i try to use my old one, i am not redirected as you stated WP now does.. its simply an invalid page… so did they take this option away now? i use wp 3.5.. and it would be nice to auto redirect all links from my old cat base to my new cat base..
     thanks! :-p
3. 

   redwall_hp said:

   @Michael There’s a useful category-to-tag converter somewhere in the WordPress admin.

   And @Michael M. ( :D ) great post. I made the switch from categories to tags back around WP 2.3. Now I mainly use categories for internal usage, sort of as flags, to put posts in the Featured area or in my sideblog.
4. 

   David Bradley said:

   Interesting point. I had too many categories from the early days of converting to WordPress and reckon it’s time to clean up and revisit tags, thanks for the much needed proverbial boot up the behind
5. 

   Icheb said:

   ACCUSE me of duplicate content? Google is certainly aware that people aren’t experts with regards to site architecture, so using the word ACCUSATION is akin to saying there’s a penalty for duplicate content on the SAME DOMAIN, which there ISN’T.
6. 

   Vladimir said:

   Just FYI: you can file the same post under several categories.

   Categories are like structural sections, tags are like keywords, both should be used, and used wisely.

   …which would you try?

   Neither :-) I would try searching first.
7. 

   Dave said:

   This was an interesting read and I’ve been thinking about the whole “tag vs. category” throwdown for a while now. Which is more useful? Which generates more traffic? Do I need to use both? etc. etc.

   You gave me something to think about, but you definitely only spoke to the categories as cons. There are pros to categories like, as Vlad says you can assign multiple categories just like tags, they are simple to use, they’ve been around forever and are familiar to user to name a few.

   My issue with tags is they just seem like categories gone wild and aren’t visible. So do my users just have to get lucky and pick the right tag? In your example, what would you tag your article on gravatars with, and what happens if it’s something different than what I think it should be?

   Don’t want a huge category list in your sidebar? Delete it and work the categories into your post layout just like tags currently are.

   The other thing I would love to hear some expert commentary on is why everyone always seems to imply that tags are so much easier to find content with versus categories. Why? I agree with Vlad again that I just use the search box.

   Bottom line: I continue to read how much better tags are than categories and I’m just not getting it. They seem just about the same to me. I’d like to see this discussion continued or more detail.

   Thanks.
8. 

   Grant said:

   Great read, i toally agree with you.

   I say you ought to have both. Tags are great for search(s/bots) but categories are great for a simple click and you at the list and yes you cant have to many categories, maybe sub categories can solve this.
9. 

   Vladimir said:

   Dave, AFAIK you cannot use tags in the URLs, but you can use categories. If a category name is a keyword in the search query, you are likely to be ranked higher for that search.

   For example, if I look for “WordPress plugin WassUp 1.5 Windows”, a page with “/wordpress/plugins/wassup.html” is likely to be ranked higher than “/wassup.html”, because the URL is “more specific”. This example is very simple, but you get the idea :-)
10. 

    Sumesh said:

    I’ve been using categories very sparingly, with less than a dozen (considering my range of topics, that certainly is short).

    I don’t display them as a link anywhere on the site, but use it to list posts by topic in the sidebar. Categories as links in sidebar or in post meta is a waste of valuable link juice – you’re simply passing the good stuff to the useless (from SERP standpoint) cat pages.
11. 

    Zhu said:

    I tend to use tags more than categories now. More flexibility, I like tag clouds (move lively than a static category list).

    I use categories like the chapters of a book actually. And the tag for real search on my blog.
12. 

    Michael Martin said:

    Michael,
    If you’re already using the categories like tags, there’s no point. You’re fine. :)

    Slevi,
    Really? I heard that before, but if I visit http://www.problogdesign.com/2008/07/08/why-tags-are-better-than-categories/ in my browser, it loads the page at that URL. No redirection to my proper permalink. :(

    Redwall,
    Ever had much trouble with links pointing to the old URLs? Or did it all go well for you? :)

    David,
    It’s one of those horrible tasks to start into, but once you start, it gets easier!

    Icheb,
    SEO is all open to interpretation. No-one knows exactly how Google works. If you don’t think duplicating all of your articles on your own domain would be a problem, that’s fine. I think it would be though (At the very least, because you’re splitting link juice for each article to 2 different places!)

    Vladimir,
    I know, but once you start doing that, what’s the difference between a tag and a category? They become the same.

    I never go to the search engine on a blog though. The default WordPress search is really poor. :(

    Dave,
    That’s a fair point. At the basis, categories and tags are almost identical in WordPress. You can use the categories as a tagging system (Like in your example where you mentioned giving 1 post multiple categories), and you can use the tags as a category system.

    If you want to use categories as a category system, I think each post has to be limited to one category. Otherwise, you’re just using a tag system, by a different name.

    I talked about that more clearly in this guest post, Using Categories and Tags Effectively, if you want to read it.

    What makes a tag more useful for finding things is that it is more specific. Categories have to be blanket terms, but tags don’t.

    Grant,
    Sub-categories are great when used effectively. My favorite example is the Hongkiat technology blog. If you can pull it off as well as they did, then you’ll have a great system!

    Sumesh,
    Category pages can be useful in the SERPs sometimes (Surprisingly!). I know my “blog layout” category ranks well in Google for that term. The same applies for tags. Searching for “domtabs” brings up my DOMtabs tag. Even the actual articles aren’t above it, strangely!

    Zhu,
    I like how tag clouds can look as well. :)
13. 

    Slevi said:

    Ah, so I see. Not sure whether that would be a wp bug or intentional, could try reporting it and see what they have to say about it :).

    But what it does redirect already is for example if you had the link contain something like “why-thags-are…”

    You posted it already and then you notice the spelling error, meanwhile your blog pinged it all with that url. When you go back to fix it to “why-tags-are…” then it’ll redirect the old incorrect permalink to the new one :).

    The same works for renaming categories and tags if I recall right.
14. 

    Michael Martin said:

    Slevi,
    It sounds like great functionality for them to have, but the implementation seems a little dodgy. I think I’ll try it out on a test blog first before doing anything here. URLs are one thing I really don’t want to get wrong!

    Thanks for letting me know about it. If WordPress can handle this without any plugins, it will make removing the categories from the URLs a much more attractive idea! :D
15. 

    kristarella said:

    I like to use both, one category per post and multiple tags per post.

    I don’t really use categories on my main blog for much anymore. They’re listed on the sitemap for people who want to cruise around. However, I think tags are probably easier for general browsing and, like Vladimir mentioned, the search bar is more useful in most circumstances.

    On a new blog project I’m doing, I’ve used categories extensively to customise post titles and archive pages. They’re pretty handy for behind the scenes coding. I’m sure you could use tags for conditional statements etc as well, but it feels less reliable: I might forget to use the tag on one post, or because there’s multiple tags I might do something that conflicts.

    As for categories in the URL. I don’t like the idea for several reasons. One being that if you want to change the category name or rearrange things it becomes a lot more difficult. Another being that it’s a blog — web-log. Lets face it… much of what we write is going to be time dependent. If you’re writing a personal blog like mine it’s even more time dependent: no one is going to feel the need to give their condolences on my grandmother’s death in a year are they?

    Then again, if you really want to build a website that is mainly usable information, which will hopefully last a long time, then go for it. Use categories in your URLs. However, if you’re writing about your experiences, even if it’s non-personal stuff like software, the internet, or some other small niche, the info has a chance of becoming outdated at the next upgrade. There’s no harm in treating your blog like a log, that’s what it was supposed to be.

    Re: the permalink plugin, I like finding non-plugin solutions so I’m not dependent on a plugin and its ongoing development. You could probably redirect with htaccess, but it might be arduous, depending on how many categories you changed.
16. 

    David Airey said:

    It took me some time before I settled upon a set list of categories. Even after a year of blogging I was shifting them around, and I know how you feel to have just a couple of articles in a particular section.

    My permalinks don’t use dates or category headings, which is certainly less of a headache if it comes to another change.
17. 

    David Bradley said:

    Is there a WordPress plugin akin to Batch Categories, that would allow me to tag a whole bunch of posts all at once with a given tag?
18. 

    Vladimir said:

    David Bradley, please try Simple Tags
19. 

    David Bradley said:

    Will do, thanks…
20. 

    Graeme said:

    I’ve tried to keep my list of categories down to 10 maximum, although as I have only recently started blogging it’s not too difficult at the moment.(Quick check now reveals a list of 10 – perfect!)

    On the other hand, if there are a lot of tags it can look horrible if they are all displayed at the bottom of a post. I’ve seen blogs with lots of 2-3 word tags and it just clutters up the bottom of a post and makes the site look untidy.
21. 

    David Bradley said:

    Doesn’t seem to have the option I need, and that’s to search through posts for a specific word and then tag all the posts found with a particular tag. Any other plugins that might have that ability?
22. 

    milo said:

    I’ve killed cats, stats were showing that only one of hundred used them, so why keep it?

    Tags are easier to handle, at least in my case and for search I use a custom G search built in.
    Kills validation, but very useful…
23. 

    ossie jesson said:

    Is there any one in the world writing a blog about something other than er. . blogging? Since i have taken an interest in the wordpress thingy, the only thing i see on my screen is about bloging blogin bloging .
    How do i find a blog to read that not either about blogin .or er along the lines of oh I i lost my socks this morning( its raining and my bus is late by the way ) and I must write about it in my blog now ,er would that be a category or a tag ?Should ls it have its own CSS ,whatever one of those is , see what i mean. We are all trapped let us out ,someone >>> please help
24. 

    David Bradley said:

    well, my Sciencebase blog is about science…does that help?
25. 

    kristarella said:

    Ossie, I write about a variety of topics.
    You can see all my categories on my sitemap (a short way down on the right hand column). My tags are at the bottom of my page.

    Basically if something is about my day, week, work etc I put it in the “Life and ramblings” category and then tag it with personal, random, movies, travel, transport (if you were waiting for the bus, or example).

    Hope that helps :)
26. 

    Slevi said:

    There are definitely blogs out there on stuff other than blogging and lost socks ;). As David said his blog for example about science, myself I tend to write on the interests within my life which are mainly health, entertainment and tech.

    So if you look for it there’s definitely more to be found than writing about just blogging and those darn socks always getting lost! :P
27. 

    redwall_hp said:

    @Michael, I use date-based permalinks, so no I didn’t run into any URL issues. I was using Google Sitmaps at the time (it broke with WP2.3, and I never re-downloaded it :D) and I just regenerated the map and Google seemed to update their indexes within a couple days. And people rarely link to category permalinks.

    @Icheb, Google *does* penalize you for duplicate content. If the exact same content is on the web in two locations, only one is going to rank well in Google.
28. 

    Edouard Stenger, France said:

    Nice article, as usual !

    I stopped a year ago using categories and switched to tags as they enable me to target directly the exact subject of my blog.

    Example : instead of putting an article in the energy category, I can tell exactly if it coal, renewables, nuclear or oil…

    Keep up the good work !
29. 

    Dave S. said:

    Interesting article.

    I’m not a fan of tag clouds. I find they usually take up too much room and they look cluttered.

    Does the wordpress search take tags into account? For example, if I type in a search term that is also a tag, will the search display posts that have that tag?

    Thank you for sharing your knowledge on your blog.
30. 

    TefemodoWhisse said:

    Very nice!!
31. 

    goldfries said:

    I think that whether or not a category would be useful or useless or somewhere in between, really depends on your blog.

    I think a personal blog would probably rack up too many categories. I’ve seen blogs with a super huge list of categories and it quite doesn’t make sense already.

    On the other hand, on my site the categories are exactly what I write about so it’s all fine and dandy. People would know where to click to find the article they need.

    That being said, I’m also looking into implementing tag clouds to add value to the site.
32. 

    ATHENA said:

    I realized this problem after i blogged for the first month. I think I was lucky to change it right then. I used to treat categories as they were tags… soon after i found it messing up my tag cloud (personally i love tag clouds, i think they act like a charm on a blog, only when they look nice tho)
    so i decided to start using my tags well. I used the simple tags plugin like many others. and use the wordpress “tag cloud” template tag to make limits on it so tht it doesnt show all of my tags but only the most used ones! =)
    Thx for this post, it makes me feel I did it the right way
33. 

    Northville Real Estate Blog said:

    Categories are better if there is just one writer, if there are multiple writers than tags are more useful in my humble opinion
34. 

    Scott Saunders said:

    Thanks for the tip. Being new to WP and blogging in general, I just thought categories were the way to go. I will definitely start tapping into tags instead.
35. 

    Ravi said:

    Very Good Article.

    Thanks
    JeevanSAthi
36. 

    mhg said:

    Thanks for this article. Best regards from germany

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