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Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?

To get into a search engine, you used to just have a solid content, structure, and keyword development and manually submit your website to the search engines and then wait for them to come cruising through with their robots and spiders. Then came Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which brought with it a more focused attempt to page ranking with link exchanges and link popularity, followed closely behind by trackbacks, and pingbacks as a way to interconnect websites and blogs to promote popularity by link exchanges. Now, the hottest ticket in town appears to be tags.

Tagging the Tags

Then came tags or tagging. This is the process of adding keywords which link directly to a site that monitors and allows search of key tags to find information on websites and blogs. Tag-related sites include Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr.

Tags and tag-driven sites offer another way of finding, as well as connecting, information on the Internet. Think of tags as a form of interactive yellow pages. The tag link takes you to a collection of posts tagged with that tag category name.

For instance, instead of going to a search engine and typing in the keywords for Nature Photography, you would click on the Nature Photography tag on the site you are visiting, which would then display a categorized listing of posts about Nature Photography.

Tags on your site can have two functions.

  1. Tags can link to related tag categories on Technorati or other tag sites, showing a collection of offsite posts from around the web all related to the tag category, such as Nature Photography.
  2. Tags can link to a generated page such as your searchs do, listing all of the posts on your site related to that specific tag.

Tags can be linked from within the text, via a list at the bottom of your post, in a list in your sidebar or elsewhere on your site, or within a Tag Cloud or tag heat map. You can see examples of tag clouds and post lists of tags on my main site, Taking Your Camera on the Road, does. The tags on that site take advantage of both of the two options for use. One set will take you to another page on my site that lists posts related to that tag, and others will take you to the Technorati site for more content related to that same tag.

Categories Categorize

Categories, on the other hand, are not tags, but do similar things. In the sidebar of this site you will see a list of the categories of subjects I talk about. They currently include WordPress Tips, WordPress News, Blog Babble, and the currently unnamed “uncategorized” category – soon subject to change.

If you are interested in viewing information on WordPress News, you would click on that category and a collection of the posts I’ve written on news about WordPress is displayed. This isn’t much different from tags, but categories are built into the core of my WordPress site. They are set by me and for me to use, allowing me to group my content under a specific umbrella category.

These categories are my choices. Blog Babble is not a Technorati tag or keyword. You might find a couple others using one or both words, but not many who are using the two put together, unless I have started a new trend. But you will find tags for “blog”, “news”, “tips”, and many of them using “WordPress” in front of them such as “WordPress Tips” as their tags. Basically, categories are up to me, reflecting the nature of my site. Tags are keywords used to categorize information.

Tags or Categories: Which One to Use?

Here is a synopsis of the similarities and differences between tags and categories.

  • Categories can have unique names. Tags need to be known names.
  • Categories can have long wordy names. Tags should have short one, two, or at the most, three words.
  • Categories generate a page of posts on your site. Tags can, too, but often generate a page of off-site posts on an off-site website.
  • Categories are not tags. Tags can be categories.
  • Categories don’t help search engines find information. Tags help search engines and tag directories catalog your site.
  • Posts are usually in one to four categories. A single post can list as many tags as you want.
  • Categories help visitors find related information on your site. Tags help visitors find related information on your site and on other sites.

Which should you use and which is better? In this excellent explanation of the difference between categories and tags and why he likes categories better than tags, Owen Winkler explains:

Maybe it’s a trivial thing, but to me it’s important. I don’t want a heat map of tags on my site, or if I did, I wouldn’t want it exclusively in place of a category listing. You could make the same argument on search engines versus directories. Search engines are going to uncover every minute detail with no human filtering and possibly no common thread between the results. Directories will return only human-filtered results, but might not contain every site in their listings.

Tagging gives you topical search capabilities for your site that are a middle ground between categories and all-out search, but it shouldn’t replace categories entirely.

I think of the two a little differently, which is why I offer both categories and tags on my main site:

How can I best help a visitor navigate around my site.

Sure, I want the highest page ranking I can get, but it’s also critical that visitors be able to move around my site to find the information they are looking for. On my main site, I have over a thousand articles on travel, nature, nature photography, travel photography, and related subjects. Finding information is a challenge. So I’ve set up categories and subcategories to help people find related subjects, but I’ve also added tags to help people find micro-related subjects.

I don’t have a “travel” category, but I have general categories related to the kind of traveling you do, like going on the road traveling in general, living on the road full-time, travel planning and preparation, and travel and photography related articles and information. But if you just want to know what I’ve written just about travel, the Travel tag will give you all the articles about travel. This broadens the range of how people can find the information they need.

I use categories as broad groups of posts and tags as micro-groups of posts, helping narrow down the interest.

Should tags replace categories? Absolutely not. Right now, Technorati is leading the pack for tags on websites, but they are one of few players on the block. This is an evolving and fast changing technology, one that even caught Technorati by surprise. I expect a lot of changes in how tags work, including search engines getting into the fray, very soon.

Categories, Tags, and WordPress

Those of you using WordPress, you have the luxury of both worlds, visibly and invisibly. Categories come with WordPress, and you can add as many categories and subcategories as you want to help users find the information they need. WordPress also works with Technorati to ping Technorati and Technorati does use the categories on your WordPress site as tags, which should also make you think twice about using funky category names. In fact, WordPress uses Ping-o-matic to ping a variety of feeds, tags, directories, and search engines automatically when you save your posts.

If you are using the full version of WordPress, you can also add tags manually or through WordPress Plugins for Tags. I’m putting some of these through the testing process and will have a report on them soon.

In a future post, I’ll discuss how to manually add tags to your wordpress.com site, overcoming the inability to edit your template files.

Tags shouldn’t replace categories, but they can help the user and search engines and directories find and catalog related information on your site, which is a very exciting improvement in website development.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network

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42 Comments

  1. Posted September 10, 2005 at 4:23 am | Permalink

    I have posted on this subject back in January. Indeed, categories are broader in scope compared to tags.

  2. Posted November 9, 2005 at 9:07 pm | Permalink

    Hey there… I just wrote a (colossal) post concerning the merits of tags versus that of categories. I did reference this entry in my post. It was very helpful. Thanks! I thought you might be interested in reading the post:
    http://sambot.com/2005/11/categories-are-dead-long-live-tag.html

    Anyway, thanks for an exceptionally well-written and informative blog!

    Blog on!

  3. Posted January 11, 2006 at 10:36 pm | Permalink

    What an excellent read! Thank you very very much! :D

  4. Posted August 8, 2006 at 10:25 pm | Permalink

    Thank you all the work you must do for this blog. I am finding it very helpful and so far I have found answers to all my questions about blogging with wordpress.com.

  5. Posted August 8, 2006 at 10:38 pm | Permalink

    Glad to help! If you have any specific questions, please let me know.

  6. Posted September 17, 2006 at 10:20 am | Permalink

    Great, always wanted to know more about this.

  7. Posted December 27, 2006 at 11:21 pm | Permalink

    Hi Lorelle,

    I used to live very unaware of what tags where before I found out about Ultimate Tag Warrior and installed it, that’s when I found out I had no clue what tags where for. Then I read…

    Now my “problem” is what to do with my categories that I used as tags. I really want to reduce some of the categories I have but I would like to know your opinion since deleting categories can bring me some 404’s (not sure if it’s really gonna be that bad since my blog isn’t really big)…

    What I’ve done so far is to create a 404 page with instructions to use the archive page.

    Other steps in the right direction would be to tag every post I have and then change my categories.

    Do you recommend anything else?

  8. Posted December 28, 2006 at 1:18 am | Permalink

    Don’t stress on this. It’s actually fairly easy and only a little complicated if you are using Permalinks. If you want to get rid of the “too many categories” to streamline your category list, you have a few choices.

    You can just delete the categories, which would then “uncategorize” any posts without secondary categories, and you will have to re-categorize them into a more appropriate category. This can be a bit time consuming as it’s a manual effort, but if you don’t have many posts, then it’s a chance to revisit your work and maybe fix a few other things along the way. ;-)

    If you are using Permalinks, make a note of all the links to the various categories. Then in your .htaccess file on your host server root directory, create redirect commands to direct the old category links to new tag links, such as blah.com/tag/tagname and that will display a tag page listing all the posts within that tag, like a search result.

    If you are not using permalinks, then you will need to change your redirects from /index.php?cat=5 to /index.php?s=tagname to create a “tag” keyword search result. Or you can use the tag link described above, depending upon how you set your tags in UTW.

    Make sure you add the categories you remove to your tag list if you still want those words in your tag list, tag cloud, or tag heat map.

    Those are the simplest of choices. And good for you for understanding the difference between categories and tags. It’s a big difference, isn’t it.

  9. Posted December 28, 2006 at 11:25 am | Permalink

    Yes, specially understanding that tags aren’t a substitute for categories is really important.

    I do use permalinks so I’ll be writing some htaccess rules then.

    Thanks for your response

  10. Sebastian
    Posted June 7, 2007 at 12:24 am | Permalink

    Hi there,
    thank you very much for your report. One question. In the hosted version of wordpress.com i can not add tags to a blog post. I can only add categories. Id like to use categories for some navigation things and for users which are not so internet profs and do not know what tags are. But i also want to use “tags”.

    In your report you write that the owners of an “full version” of wordpress can add tags to post. Is wordpress.com not hosting the “full version” for me? Is there a way to enable this? Or do you now a hosting (maybe for free) where i can use the “full version”?

    thank you very much
    Sebastian

  11. Posted June 7, 2007 at 8:47 am | Permalink

    WordPress.com blogs are not the full version. The full version of WordPress is available to those who have web hosting (usually paid) and it allows access to the template files which create the look of the website through the WordPress Theme, ability to customize anything and everything, and full access to a wide variety of WordPress Plugins.

    WordPress.com blogs are for those focused on blogging not tweaking their blog, though for a small fee you can pay for the ability to customize your WordPress Theme and get a few other benefits. You cannot customize your blog other than through the use of WordPress sidebar accessories known as Widgets and by changing WordPress Themes.

    If you would like to add tags, the micro-categorization of your blog posts, I recommend you use the Site Search Tags in A Technorati Tag Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users, the only way I’ve found to add tags to your WordPress.com blog.

    Many also use this technique on their full version WordPress blogs as this technique is so easy to use.

  12. Posted June 7, 2007 at 12:47 pm | Permalink

    I use WordPress to power several of my business models. Wish I could do more with it.
    Thanks.
    Steve Skooz

  13. damnprinter
    Posted September 25, 2007 at 12:03 pm | Permalink

    Finally have my categories the way I want and now tags come out. Also you can’t have parent and child tags so it’s not that useful unless a topic can exist in a category and be tagged as well.

  14. Posted September 25, 2007 at 5:56 pm | Permalink

    I’m confused about your understanding of how tags and categories work. You can have the same word or phrase as a tag and a category. Tags do not have parent/child relationships because they never have and there is no need. They are your blog’s index words. Categories are your table of contents, thus, they are by default hierarchical.

  15. Fred
    Posted September 30, 2007 at 8:19 pm | Permalink

    tags can be categories but categories are not tags

  16. Posted September 30, 2007 at 11:41 pm | Permalink

    Nope. As explained, especially in Tags and Tagging in WordPress, a tag is any link with rel="tag" in the link anchor attribute. All WordPress blogs have the tag attribute in their category links.

    Does that make categories tags? Absolutely. Does it help us understand the difference between a category and a tag? Definitely not.

    For semantics though, categories are your blog’s table of contents and tags are its index words – the keywords that describe that individual post, connecting with other posts with that keyword in the post content. But categories are tags, in the HTML definition of the word.

  17. Posted November 29, 2007 at 10:27 pm | Permalink

    Nice post . Helped :)

  18. Posted January 31, 2008 at 10:25 pm | Permalink

    I see this is a few years old but this post is so helpful. Thank you for sharing such great information! Off to “retag” my site!

  19. Posted February 18, 2008 at 6:38 pm | Permalink

    Hello Lorelle,

    Thanks for the incredibly helpful post.

    Just as a point of clarification, will using tags also help my WP search function? I’m not currently using tags and when I use the search form on my blog it sometimes returns iffy results.

  20. Posted February 18, 2008 at 7:33 pm | Permalink

    @ Jazmin:

    Tags have nothing to do with search. Everyone gets iffy results with the current WordPress search and we’re still waiting for improvements in that area.

    The only benefit tags have is the adding of keywords to your blog posts, but if you are using the keywords in the post, that’s the same thing, so why bother?

  21. Posted February 19, 2008 at 12:19 am | Permalink

    Got it! Thanks so much for the advice (and quick reply!), Lorelle :)

  22. Posted March 8, 2008 at 4:37 am | Permalink

    Thanks for this info – I really like the comparison of Categories = table of contents, Tags = index words.

  23. creeping
    Posted April 23, 2008 at 10:36 am | Permalink

    How come when I search sites like Technorati, my blog doesn’t appear anywhere near the top, but others who quote me or link to me, do appear near top? Is that tag/category related?

  24. Posted April 23, 2008 at 3:51 pm | Permalink

    @ creeping:

    Each site has their own algorithm, mathematical formula to estimate where a site ranks. Some make sense, some don’t. Some I think I will never understand. :D

    For the most part, it is keyword related (how many relevant and associated search terms/tag/keywords within the content – the post MUST be talking about what you are searching for) and incoming link based (the more who link to the post, the more likely it has the information). From there, it’s anyone’s guess.

    As long as readers are finding you and the people who need to find you find you, then who cares what some ranking service says.

  25. creeping
    Posted April 23, 2008 at 5:41 pm | Permalink

    Thanks L – presumed that a blog “name” would take preference over tags in the search algorithms but clearly that’s not the case

  26. Posted April 23, 2008 at 7:09 pm | Permalink

    @ creeping:

    Tags do not figure into Google’s search algorithm, other than as keywords. Google does not currently recognize tags. They are just more words on the site.

  27. Posted August 1, 2008 at 5:04 am | Permalink

    This is a splendid piece of writing that has survived the test of time! And it still addresses my queries as a newbie blogger. Thanks for this.

    I still have one question. If Categories are not Tags and Tags can be Categories, and given that over the years, all possible English phrases and words have been captured by Technorati (in all unrelated context and usage), my question now is: Why even bother creating the Category in blogs?

    The wordpress environment confuses it further for me by lumping tags together with categories in the Manage/Categories area. The only value I see with this is for the SEO effect on the Permalinks (which is quickly negated when you indicate two or more categories on a blog post). And this would be too technical and bothersome to the average social blogger.

    I wonder if it is time to retire “the Category” and instead allow the blogger to assign ONE Permalink Tag amongst all her 48 other Tags indicated on her blog post..

  28. Posted August 1, 2008 at 8:52 am | Permalink

    @ Paul:

    Categories are tags. Tags are not categories – though they contain categorized information. At least, that is how it used to be. Tags are per post categories which are specific ONLY to that post but should reflect the overall subject matter of the whole blog but might not. Categories are the table of contents, the guide to direct visitors to related content. Think of them as “Parents” and the tags as “children”.

    You do not have to tag your content with category names. I know this is confusing, and it might melt at some time, but think of it as Table of Contents and Index words. If they will work in a book, they will work on a blog, which is a kind of modern book.

  29. Posted August 17, 2008 at 1:13 am | Permalink

    Very helpful read, I really wanted to know what the hell tags were all about, and you’ve explained it beautifully!

    Why people can’t use the correct term and call them keywords is anyone’s guess… After all that’s what they are!

    Thanks!

  30. Posted September 19, 2008 at 8:25 am | Permalink

    WordPress Error: Category insert to DB when posting…
    I have a WordPress blog on a domain. When we make a post, we would like for the categories to be inserted into the wp_post table within the database. Their seems to be an error because every post has defaulted by category to 0.

    I have tested this on many different domains and the classic view to see if it was a template issue.

    Does anyone know how to program the posts so that they start importing into the database?

    If I could get this to work then I could start listing other articles throughout the site pertaining to a particular category.

  31. Posted September 19, 2008 at 10:06 am | Permalink

    @ Kight:

    These types of issues are best addressed in the WordPress Support Forum. Interaction with the database are at the core based upon the template tags and functions within the WordPress Theme, so there is a Theme base to the issue.

    I don’t understand why you need to have the categories in that particular table when you can pull them from the table they are in the database already. Maybe I’m not understanding your issue, but they can help you there. Good luck.

  32. Posted September 19, 2008 at 11:00 am | Permalink

    Understood, I will give them another go…

    Basically what I am trying to do is pull 2 different lists of blog posts on my home page. Both columns will pull 2 different categories by SQL statement.

    Is their an easier way?

  33. Posted September 19, 2008 at 2:47 pm | Permalink

    @ Kight:

    That has nothing to do with forcing additional categories into your database tables. Why not use a double WordPress Loop with conditional tags – or just the conditional tags? Many people customize the content on their blog from multiple categories, on the front page and in the sidebar. The sidebar content requires a second pass through the WordPress Loop or use a WordPress Plugin like Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin which is invaluable for what you want to do, to my understanding.

  34. Posted December 5, 2008 at 9:37 am | Permalink

    Nice article. But what are best practices with Tags – maximum number to use per post, single words, maximum to display in a cloud etc?

  35. Posted December 5, 2008 at 11:34 am | Permalink

    The key is to use words people use to search. If they search for “WordPress Themes” use that. If they search for “WordPress Magazine Themes” then use that, if you are writing about that subject. If you are writing about “how to make a WordPress Theme for a magazine style site” and people will search for that, then use that. There are no rules. Use search keywords, terms, and phrases. As for clouds, shorter is better. That’s a design issue, not an SEO issue. You decide which you would rather have. Many designers are either putting tag clouds up as replacement navigation for categories, or burying the tag cloud clutter in their blog footers. The importance of tags is changing and categories are coming back strong into blog fashions.

  36. lordpum
    Posted January 13, 2009 at 6:27 am | Permalink

    Thanks for your post, I was just searching a way to understand the difference between tags and categories. :D

  37. Posted January 29, 2009 at 5:23 am | Permalink

    Hey Lorelle,

    I have a question. I’m using All-in-one SEO pack but I have had Simple Tags installed for a while. I noticed that Google has indexed a bunch of my http://www.example.com/tag/ pages so now in Google, sometimes I see what I’m searching for as a /tag/ page and am taken to a page that shows the “posts containing the tags”… I’ve had to manually redirect over 40 /tags/ page to specific posts or the homepage… Is this normal? (for WordPress to spit out /tag/ pages for every tag and is it normal or OK for Google to index these pages?)

    Finally, should I just disable Simple Tags and only use SEO pack for tagging?

    I don’t want to create clutter and more importantly have users taken to an ugly landing page (aka all the /tag/ pages) instead of the content and articles themselves?

    Thanks a lot, great blog!

  38. Posted January 29, 2009 at 3:01 pm | Permalink

    Honestly, I’d keep simple tags and get rid of the SEO stuff. It’s the ugly landing page and duplicated content that is troublesome. Tags serve a purpose but content is always better.

  39. Posted January 29, 2009 at 3:13 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for your reply, Lorelle.

    I ask because when I do a Google search for “i work 09 virus” I get the 1st placement in over 660,000 webpages. Now, I feel this is because I’ve entered the tag “i work 09 virus” in SEO Pack… I could be mistaken but my “post titles” on Google are the same as the titles in SEO pack.

    I write about 1-2 articles a day on technology and my goal is for Google search users to be able to find my articles by entering the keywords in search, of course, I’d love for my results to be at the top.

    From what I understand data entered in the SEO pack fields (under each post) is the META title, description and keywords… I’m not sure if Simple Tags deals with the META but for now it’s just a little confusing…

    Appreciate your clarification…

  40. Posted March 8, 2009 at 3:08 am | Permalink

    This was the first article I read about tags, I am fairly new to WordPress and I’m getting my education where ever I can get it. Thanks…

  41. Posted March 29, 2009 at 8:52 am | Permalink

    Categories are definitely broader then tags. What I’m still trying to figure out is how tags play into SEO. With All in One SEO pack for wordpress you then get to add all of your keywords for the post. Are those keywords the same as the tags?

  42. onthuhlist
    Posted July 9, 2009 at 9:34 am | Permalink

    I still honestly don’t see the value in having both tags and categories. I’d like to be able to have one or the other that accomplishes both site organization and grouping, and search engine registration.


97 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. [...] Lorelle has a big posting on it. And I’m still confused! [...]

  2. [...] Jacob Appelbaum’s blog on Hurricane Katrina is an amazing read, but it also features an interesting use of categories as tags. I’ve talked about the difference between categories and tags, the limitations of using categories as tags, and how to manually add Technorati and search tags to wordpress.com. Jacob’s site pushes the categories as tags feature to the limit, making the categories really work as tags. [...]

  3. [...] The article Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? didn’t really help me much. [...]

  4. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? (explains that tags are not a replacement to categories, they are complementary…great, realistic explanation) Adding Technorati Tags to WordPressMU Sites (blog posts pointing to related posts at Technorati tags, and pointing to related posts within your blog) A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and wordpress.com Users (making the bookmarking process easier) [...]

  5. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? (explains that tags are not a replacement to categories, they are complementary…great, realistic explanation) Adding Technorati Tags to WordPressMU Sites (blog posts pointing to related posts at Technorati tags, and pointing to related posts within your blog) A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and wordpress.com Users (making the bookmarking process easier) [...]

  6. [...] I have talked a lot about how to put tags on your posts, including how to create a custom bookmarklet to add tags to your wordpress.com or WordPress posts, and the benefits of tagging, as well as the difference between tags and categories, but what I haven’t talked about is the issues involving tagging from the end user point of view. [...]

  7. [...] After reading this and this, I think I finally get it. I was initially looking at it from a standpoint of categories or tags. I’d never really considered looking at it from a view of, categories and tags. [...]

  8. Using Categories and Tags, Together

    Back when tags first started popping up in blogs, I just didn’t really get the point. Instead of putting blog posts into categories called Books, Movies, Life, people were using tags: books, movies, life. I didn’t really see how this was an…

  9. [...] I’m adding a few changes, which most of you probably won’t even notice, to the blog. First off there’ll be tags next to the existing categories (of which the latter have been cleaned up somewhat). The combination of the two sounds like a useful deal. Use a single category to define the global scope of a post and use tags to make it more search and indexable from outside the blog. [...]

  10. [...] Categories, Tags, and WordPress Those of you using WordPress, you have the luxury of both worlds, visibly and invisibly. Categories come with WordPress, and you can add as many categories and subcategories as you want to help users find the information they need. WordPress also works with Technorati to ping Technorati and Technorati does use the categories on your WordPress site as tags, which should also make you think twice about using funky category names. In fact, WordPress uses Ping-o-matic to ping a variety of feeds, tags, directories, and search engines automatically when you save your posts. [...]

  11. [...] tags (like Technorati tags) [...]

  12. [...] Doing, Going, Learning, Planning for the Road, Business of Nature Photography, Photography Techniques, Web Pages, Website Development, Telling, and Israel are categories. WordPress automatically turns categories into tags. Yes, these are topics I blog about, but a few months ago I decided to start this blog, Lorelle on WordPress, to hold all my website development and blogging topics, including WordPress topics. So I can explain to someone that I do blog about website development, blogging and WordPress on one of my blogs. [...]

  13. [...] I have long thought of categories as categories and tags as helpful, linkable keywords, leading the user to more information on that specific term or reference. I spelled this out in “Tags Are Not Categories – Got It?”. This was written after I tried to help people understand the differences between tags and categories in “Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?”, “The Problems With Tags and Tagging” and “Categories versus Tags: Defining the Limitations”. Honestly, why do categories have to be tags. Categories can be tags, sure, but not all categories are tags, and not all tags should be categories. I think of categories as a table of contents and tags as the index page of a book. If I’m searching for a broad topic, unsure of exactly what I need to find or the keywords, then I will hit the table of contents (categories). If I know the exact word I need in order to find the information I want, then I will hit the index page (tags). As repositories of content and information, why should blogs be any different? [...]

  14. [...] Tags and Categories: Categories are for users. Tags are for tagging services like Technorati. Is that clear? Now, let me confuse things. [...]

  15. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  16. [...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave aReply [...]

  17. [...] Introduction to Tags: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/ [...]

  18. [...] Now comes the last task and I was anticipating problems here since I didn’t know anything about tagging. Questions like what is it?, what is it used for?, advantages? seemed tough.. But I began my search to find the information to get started and I found this article. There are quite a few articles on tagging if you want to read about it. From this post and other posts here, I kind of figured out that tagging is one more way of organizing your contents and properly organized contents can make visitor’s life little more easier for sure. I also figured out that there are more concepts around tagging like track backs, ping backs, various tags related sites etc which I will probably cover in a separate post (I too need to refine my concepts a bit more). Coming back to the issue of providing a mechanism of tagging the blog posts which once again wasn’t difficult to answer because Christine Davis has written a plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior for this very purpose.  I went ahead and installed the plugin by simply uploading the Ultimate Tag Warrior in the /wp-content/plugins folder as instructed and also as I knew from my last experience. [...]

  19. [...] An excellent discussion of “tags versus categories” can be found here. Lorelle’s blog is a true treasure trove of information. Stop now and go spend an hour there – you will come back with a much better idea of what the hell you want. [...]

  20. [...] which would stand their context and meaning even outside this blog. Posts by Carthick Sharma and Lorelle give the best [...]

  21. [...] I’m going wrong (although the tag cloud part of it seems to work). Also getting the sense of the difference between tags and categories, which seems to open things up in terms of highlighting themes. I’m still experimenting with [...]

  22. [...] Up until now I have been using the default Categories feature of WordPress as tags. Although very similar, there are differences between the two. [...]

  23. [...] خوندم درباره‌ی این‌که برچسب و دسته با هم فرق دارند؛ اینجا یک‌سری تفاوت‌های باحال از نظر به کارگیری هر کدو م [...]

  24. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? (tags: blog tips)                                [...]

  25. [...] cual es la diferencia entre etiqueta y categoría, les recomiendo el artículo escrito por Lorelle: Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?. Básicamente un etiqueta tiende hacer una palabra clave de tu artículo y hacer relaciónes más [...]

  26. [...] Category Vs Tags [...]

  27. [...] they get into the whole  “everything is connected” theme (here’s a more in depth look at that), but I really find that I used them the same way as categories. No need to fuss around too [...]

  28. [...] cual es la diferencia entre etiqueta y categoría, les recomiendo el artículo escrito por Lorelle: Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?. Básicamente un etiqueta tiende hacer una palabra clave de tu artículo y hacer relaciónes más [...]

  29. [...] flexibility for organising categories and tags. Going through the discussions on categories vs tags from the WordPress community is refreshing to see usage disparities. Flexibility is needed. In [...]

  30. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? « Lorelle on WordPress [...]

  31. [...] found a nice blog article about tags versus categories. It explains both worlds, quite useful if you are new to tagging. The tags I am using are only [...]

  32. [...] habe soeben das Tags Plugin “Simple Tagging” installiert. Neben den Kategorien kann ich jetzt verschiedene Tags (Schlüsselwörter) pro Beitrag angeben. Auf der linken Seite kann man dann die Häufigkeit der Schlüsselwörter in der Wolke (Tag Cloud) sehen. Schlüsselwörter die öfters vorkommen, werden dunkler und größer angezeigt. Mehr zu Tags und Kategorien gibt es hier zu lesen… [...]

  33. [...] Confused what is the difference between categories and tags, and which one to use. Check out this article at Lorelle on WordPress. In short, tags can be categories but categories are not tags. Categories [...]

  34. [...] what is the difference between categories and tags, and which one to use. Check out this article at Lorelle on WordPress. In short, tags can be categories but categories are not tags. Categories [...]

  35. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  36. [...] convert them all to tags, re-tag posts, and then cull the categories down to maybe a dozen. Why? Because only unknowing plebeians use categories as tags. …Yeah, this was news to me [...]

  37. [...] And then of course, there was the realization that categories and tags don’t necessarily have to be equivalent. If you want a more thorough discussion of the tags vs. categories issue, this Lorelle on WordPress post would be a good read. [...]

  38. [...] Its error clearly caused by Ultimate Tag Warrior that i’m currently using. Since WordPress 2.3 now natively supports tagging on posts, i don’t need to use Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin. But ’cause my current theme, MX4, don’t yet offer WordPress 2.3 tags support, so need to adding it manually. But before i do that, i have time to think about what’s the surplus of tagging, what will happen if use and/or not to use the tagging? is it will generating error? Absolutely NO, the tagging doesn’t generate any errors, tags or tagging function is to increase our blog’s traffic. Or like Lorelle said: Tags or tagging is the process of adding keywords which link directly to a site that monitors and allows search of key tags to find information on websites and blogs.1 [...]

  39. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One [...]

  40. [...] crowd or the “categories are long, tags are short” crowd. Here’s a good run-down of such [...]

  41. [...] A versão 2.3 do WordPress veio introduzir uma alteração muito significativa na forma como os posts são classificados, permitindo que essa classificação seja realizada por tags individuais colocados pelo próprio blogger. É possível obter mais informação sobre este mesmo sistema aqui. [...]

  42. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  43. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  44. [...] the curious amongst my fellow geeks, Lorelle has explained it all. Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? Tags Are Not Categories – Got [...]

  45. [...] Also see Categories versus tags, what’s the difference and which one to use? [...]

  46. [...] Categories are not tags But not necessarily vice versa! Check out this excellent article on the difference between the two. Lorelle makes the point that tags are often less formally [...]

  47. [...] only needed 6. I realized I can use "tags" to further organize my posts. That’s the power of tags. If I find myself writing a lot about a topic, then I’ll create a category for that topic. [...]

  48. [...] Natürlich wurden sich darüber schon Gedanken gemacht und zwar schon 2005. Na toll. Die Entscheidung für Tags oder Kategorien macht es mir dann aber auch nicht leichter. [...]

  49. [...] subject categories: I do understand the difference between the two (Lorelle VanFossen’s Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? helped me clear that up when I first started using UTW); I want to use tags for subjects I may [...]

  50. [...] out what Lorelle says about which one to use (categories or tags) in your blog and [...]

  51. [...] the Classes of School 2.0 Filed Under (21st Century Classrooms) by mrpowers on 04-04-2008 After reading this post, I started re-thinking the way I organize my curriculum. Organization is the key to completing [...]

  52. [...] avoided Tags. because I cannot quite get straight the differences between them. I’ve read various articles that tell me Tags are like Micro-categories, but I’m really none the wiser. I flirted for a [...]

  53. [...] tags and categories are very [...]

  54. [...] those who are interested, check out: Categories versus Tags or Tags vs. [...]

  55. [...] don’t know what a tag is, and what the difference between a category and tag is – read the Category versus Tags article at Lorelle on WordPress. I can’t explain them any better than that, so head on over [...]

  56. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? « Lorelle on WordPress [...]

  57. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  58. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? Possibly related posts:Confused by wordpress’ category and tags? You’re not the only one.Tags Vs. CategoriesHappy Taggiversary to Technorati [...]

  59. [...] WordPress 2.5 is pretty sweet.  Most of the upgrades are on the management side of things, so it doesn’t look any different to the end reader.  One of the big changes (that actually occurred back in 2.3) is the addition of tags. See the discussion on tags vs. categories. [...]

  60. [...] don’t know what a tag is, and what the difference between a category and tag is – read the Category versus Tags article at Lorelle on WordPress. I can’t explain them any better than that, so head on over [...]

  61. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? « Lorelle on WordPress Here is a synopsis of the similarities and differences between tags and categories. (tags: tagging blogging) [...]

  62. [...] http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/ « Paypal Button Generator Toolbar [...]

  63. [...] note on when to use Categories and when to use Tags in WordPress. In general, I subscribe to Lorelle’s school of thought: Treat Categories as your blog’s table of contents, and Tags as your blog’s index. [...]

  64. [...] kan … I sendiri bingung bedainnya. Then, I came across this site [...]

  65. [...] [Categories versus Tags - What’s the Difference and Which One?] [...]

  66. [...] now built into WordPress.  So can easily apply tags to posts and pages.  Although WordPress guru Lorelle argues in a blog that tags and categories serve different purposes, I’m going to suggest that tags and [...]

  67. [...] Fuentes de las que he obtenido la información. [...]

  68. [...] One problem with iblog is that it is not up to date with the trend in blogging and thus not even tag is supported, however, it allows user to customize the theme (note CSS, not just changing the [...]

  69. [...] reading this post, I started re-thinking the way I organize my [...]

  70. [...] guess that’s why, for guys like us, categories exist. If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:Flickr photo taggingSecondbrain worthy competitor [...]

  71. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? « Lorelle on WordPressTo get into a search engine, you used to just have a solid content, structure, and keyword development and manually submit your website to the search engines and then wait for them to come cruising through with their robots and spiders. [...]

  72. [...] : click HERE ( baca langsung disumbernya saja lebih lengkap [...]

  73. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  74. [...] I still don’t really get the difference between categories & tags. [...]

  75. [...] Categorize or tag your posts to make it easy for readers to find more information on those topics. For help learning about the difference between tags and categories, click here. [...]

  76. [...] Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One? [...]

  77. [...] Here’s a link that tries to explain things… [...]

  78. [...] class blog needs to use both categories and tags.  Read about them here and here.  Create a category called “Weekly Assignments” and put the post in that [...]

  79. [...] and web design. I scratched my head and experimented aimlessly until I came across WordPress expert Lorelle’s post on how best to use categories and tags on your [...]

  80. [...] at Lorelle on WordPress says: Think of tags as a form of interactive yellow pages. The tag link takes you to a collection [...]

  81. [...] seem to have found a good resource at Lorelle VanFossen’s site.  I’m still not sure it solved the issue.  I’m a bit nutty when it comes to [...]

  82. [...] Tags vs. Categories I had been wondering what the difference was. Did a Google search, and found this. Also this. [...]

  83. [...] a similar note, here’s a link that talks about the diffence between TAGS and CATEGORIES: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/ Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Post screenshots to WordPress blogs with a Firefox [...]

  84. [...] If you go on this URL you will find all sites that are tagged under “technology”. For those who are confused between tag and categories refer to this excellent article from Lorelle [...]

  85. [...] tinggalkan komentar » Hari ini kerjaan saya adalah memberikan TAG pada semua postingan saya di blog… pekerjaan yang membosnkan dan melelahkan… Emang ada beberapa kelebihan dan kekurangan antara penggunaan TAG ataupun CATEGORIES… bisa silahkan baca disini… http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/ [...]

  86. [...] that’s something I can deal with.  There’s plenty of space there.  I had considered moving to tags, but don’t see any real benefit at this [...]

  87. [...] categories versus tags [...]

  88. [...] Here’s a page I wanted to share during today’s WordPress training, explaining the difference between categories and tags: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/ [...]

  89. [...] http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one [...]

  90. [...] 06/07/07 10:26 AM Thanks to EdBrenner on the RapidWeaver forums I read this article on categories and tags. Based on that, i’ve decided to start tagging entries along with categories. I’ve [...]

  91. [...] a bit of research reading other articles on this topic: Usability Post, Lorelle, Blue Flavor, a bit of twittering, and another reflective look at my own blogs — these are [...]

  92. [...] I had brief knowledge about the differences between tags and categories, however, after reading an article about tags and categories by WordPress blogger, Lorelle [...]

  93. [...] a way to link out to other blogs which use the same tags, and he references a post by Lorelle on Lorelle on WordPress which says much the same thing. Lorelle adds that tags originated with the likes of Del.icio.us, [...]

  94. [...] are unique to the individual blog you are looking at and are used to organise posts by grouping large numbers of related / similar posts [...]

  95. [...] good little article here which outlines the difference between categories and [...]

  96. [...] is the difference between tags and categories as you use them in your WordPress interface?  Lorelle provides a starting point in helping you figure out how to use [...]

  97. [...] was between Tags and Categories.  I found a great article on a fellow wordpresser’s blog on how to.  So thanks to Lorelle’s blog (which also has lots of other interesting facts for blog [...]

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