Mon Dec 24 02:03:16 PST 2018

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I do not believe the tags
are being heavily used
to influence search
relevancy algorithms,
but eventually they may carry some weight. And many of the people who use tags
also publish websites where they may link to some of the items they tagged.
As the user search history builds and search engines can cross-compare search
histories between users, the tag data may be used to help understand what concepts
and other documents a particular document is related to. For example:
? When people tag or link to documents on their own, they are likely to
use a variety of terms to describe a document. This type of somewhat
random and sloppy information organization is known as a folksonomy.
? If searchers tag my site SEO or Internet marketing then search engines
may believe my site is about those topics.
? If the same users frequently tag SearchEngineWatch.com and
SeoBook.com, then a search engine may think that the two websites
are related.
? Yahoo! My Web allows you to share what sites you are tagging with
your friends.
? Google created a program called Google Co-op that allows groups of
people to create a topical search engine by tagging relevant sites.
Google users can then subscribe to allow those results to appear in
their Google search results.
? Yahoo! and Google both have feed readers that they can use to see
how popular your site is and how frequently readers visit it.
? If my site ranks well in search results and many users never click on the
listing, search engines may want to demote my site. If most people
who click on my listing immediately click the back button, search
engines may want to demote my site or flag it for human review.
? Search engines will be able to cross-compare user acceptance data (as
described in the point above
, what sites are being tagged, how those
sites are being tagged, and linkage data to determine if the popularity
of a site is natural or if it is being manipulated by human intervention.
? Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars, and also owns many
other services (AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Toolbar, etc.
that
allow them to collect web usage data. As Google hosts more of the
web?s content they will be able to refine their relevancy algorithms by
incorporating more usage data into their algorithms.
? If you can think of a way to create a site that people interested in your
topic would want to tag, then you will be better off than 95% of your
competition.
? Tagging somewhat relates to link building. Much later on in the book
I cover link building in depth.