Tagging and Search Engine Abuse

A few months ago, I was talking to a Search Engine Marketer in Vegas about Technorati Tag Search and the potential for abuse by those in our industry. He seemed bewildered; he had never used Technorati, or Del.icio.us. I gave him a quick breakdown, shared some testing I was doing and told him to watch the tag spammers have a good'ole time with these tags.

And it seems Danny "Search Engine Watch" Sullivan sees the the future of "tagging" running the same course:

In case you've missed it, there's been an explosion of interest in "tagging," the idea that if everyone labels photos, blogs and so on, we'll more easily be able to find what we're looking for. But all the interest (dare I say hype) is largely ignoring the fact that we've had tagging on the web for going on 10 years, and the experience on the search side is that it can't be trusted.

Read article: Tagging Not Likely The Killer Solution For Search

I actually think Techonorati Tag searches are a great way to find relevant information on a given subject. As you can see on this blog, I use them.

BUT once the"masses" catch on to technology that can be used for monetary gain and early adopters move on to the next "big thing" the abuse begins.

For reference see any marketing site that touts corporate blogging for pr, or articles on advertising in RSS and as I predict, soon-to-be articles on Podcast marketing... lol

Technorati Tags: blogs, tags, marketing, real estate news, rss, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, seo