Blogger does not provide users with a way to sort or categorise their posts by keyword, but this is a useful additional tool for sorting posts, especially on a general (rambling) blog like this one. Keywords (or Tags) are also increasing in popularity as a way for web authors to self-categorise material that they post. (photographs on flickr, for example, or webpages that are added to a bookmarking service like del.icio.us). This process is referred to as folksonomy.

Technorati also uses "tags" to graphically indicate the relative popularity of a topic at a given moment, as well as to provide users with a different way to sort & search posts that are on the service. Simply type tag: in the technorati search box with your keyword to see all posts that have been tagged with that term.

After adding trackback & link cosmos features to this blog to make it as interactive and search friendly as possible, I considered adding keywords, categories or tags. I looked for a way to add this feature without using bookmarklets, since I don't always blog from the same machine, but bookmarklets seem to be the most speedy and efficient way to get this done - although there is still room for increased efficiency.

In "2 birds with one stone" mode, and thanks to Ted Ernst, I'm generating my tags using a bookmarklet that writes tags with two properties. They link to del.ici.ous (where I have an account and can bookmark blog entries) and are written in a form that can be read by technorati. Theoretically, then, my posts should appear by keyword on my del.icio.us page and be added to technorati's search results using the same tags.

The del.icio.us page opens with a list of every post that I've bookmarked. To use categories, select a keyword from the right-hand column to go to a page listing all the posts that I've tagged with that keyword. To narrow your search or combine terms from this page, choose the "related tags" column second from the right. Select a related tag for a new list page, or select "add" to build a list of posts containing both tags.

I hope this is a useful additional freshblog tool!!

Filed in: delicious, folksonomy, blogtech, tags, categories