tagterms.com: The world’s first tag based commercial search engine / directory…
tagterms.com. The world’s first 100% tag based commercial search engine / directory. We think, at least. When we put this site up, we hadn’t come across one yet, and we looked. Really. There were some people with classified ads, a non-commercial directory, the 1000tags.com guys, and a few others, but no commercial projects like this one. Just to be sure though, a better way to put it might be “…tag based SUSTAINABLE commercial search…”, but it just didn’t sound as cool. Too many big words, or something.
Pretty cool, huh?
Got questions?
What’s a tag, tagging, tag cloud, etc?
What the #%& is tagterms.com?
How does tagterms work?
Oh boy, not another ‘organize the world’s information’ type deal? What’s the point?
Why should I even consider submitting my site? What’s in it for me?
Alright, so you convinced me – What if my site deals with adult content?
How much does it cost?
What if I want it for free? Can you hook me up?
Where did the first tags and sites listed on tagterms.com come from?
This looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes a LOT like 1000tags.com; what’s up?
Who are you guys? (AKA: Is Amazon.com sponsoring this little experiment?)
We got answers:
What’s a tag, tagging, tag cloud, etc?
Tagging and folksonomies have become a new way to find, categorize, label, organize, and search for relevant and related content and resources on the internet.
What’s a tag? That’s a great question, and considering our whole site and approach to organizing the information contained in it is based on them, probably a pretty important one as well. Really simply put, in this context, a tag is a short (One, two, or three word) label, or a descriptor, associated with the content of a particular page. In other words, if the page is about advertising, then the most obvious tag for the page would be ‘advertising’. Tags can also be used to show specific properties of a page or item that might not be obvious just from the page itself; for example, if a page is talking about ‘mortgage rates’, an appropriate tag might be ‘refinance’ -- even if the word isn’t mentioned in the context of the page. This allows the viewer to see a higher level of organization and relationships across a deeper breadth of topics than just a simple keyword based approach.
On the same note, ‘tagging’ is the action associated with creating the tag itself and basing the relevance of the tag on something. Nothing more, nothing less… In some instances, this is accomplished by a large social network, or group of individuals, each individually assigning the same tag to a page showing the relevance that it might have to an individual topic. Think of it like a vote; you tag your page with ‘advertising’ and a bunch of people agree, then your page is probably related to advertising. On the other hand, if you tag your page covering ‘underwater basket weaving’ with ‘advertising’, then most people are probably not going to agree with you (Even if you use the word advertising on your page – it doesn’t exactly match the context of underwater basket weaving…) and your page is considered less relevant. Of course, there are other methods of tagging a page in this context, based both on commercial principles and / or the social networking aspects currently being explored: One method is based on the number of related items contained within the tag itself. An example of this is that a tag, say ‘advertising’, has 50 pages listed under it, while the tag ‘underwater basket weaving’ only has two (And we’re being generous there…), obviously the ’advertising’ tag is of greater relevance. Another method of tagging a page (And the one we prefer – obviously…), while still maintaining the basis on popularity and the ‘social network’ principles, is to use the number of user or visitor click-throughs to that page, with each click itself acting as a vote. The more clicks the page receives, the more relevant it is… Vs. the exact opposite, where the less clicks, the less relevant.
And then, of course, there are ‘tag clouds’. You now have all of these pages with tags, and you’ve assigned some sort of relevancy score to those pages, either by the number of corresponding tags, the number of clicks, the number of pages, whatever, and you’ve got to display them somehow. This is where tag clouds come into play; A ‘tag cloud’ is just a visual representation of the tags in the data set. You need to extract the data that has been tagged and show it in a way that is both visually appealing and shows the relevance of the returned data to the request; you do this by listing the tags (Sometimes in alphabetical order, some times on random order, sometimes in another specified order) in a simple list, with tags having different font sizes and color based on specific criteria, such as the number of items relating to that tag, the popularity of that tag, and so on. Now you have a ‘tag cloud’. Isn’t it pretty? (Interesting thought of the day: What do you call a whole bunch of ‘tag clouds’? -- A ‘tag storm’? A ‘thundertag’? Don’t know… Haven’t come across that term just yet. Any suggestions?)
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What the #%& is tagterms.com?
It’s real simple: tagterms.com is a website that categorizes and lists web pages in the form of tags and tag clouds based on a number of factors, like the popularity of the page, the popularity of the tag, and a few others. It’s also 100% commercial, meaning that ALL of the pages that you see here are paid listings. We don’t crawl the web looking for information, we don’t list sites just because we think they are cool; you’ve got to pay to play in our directory / search engine.
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How does tagterms work?
tagterms.com works just like a ‘standard’ ‘old’ ‘regular’ directory and is based on the simple principle that a website publisher wants to spread the word about his or her site.
But that’s just the beginning; in a standard directory, a group of editors reviews submitted sites (Whether they are paid submissions, like the Yahoo Directory, or free submissions, like DMOZ) and lists them in standard categories from a fixed set of topics, ordered by a set standard, be it alphabetically or another method (Such as PageRank in the Google directory).
tagterms.com is based on a different approach to organizing and displaying that information, one that includes our users and ‘customers’ in the process.
And there are some MAJOR differences.
Here a few of them are:
Instead of just listing sites based solely on their name, we display sites differently based on their popularity. We asked a simple question:” Is there a reason that Amazon.com should show up higher in a search for ‘online book stores’ based on just the fact that their name starts with an A?” Or, an even better one, “Is Amazon.com the site that viewers of tagterms.com will find the most relevant, just because their name starts with an A?” Nah… We didn’t think so. So, we don’t play that game; you as a visitor get to see just how popular our other users thought a particular site was for the topic, or tag, at hand. So for your search on ‘Online Book Store’, maybe the most relevant would be barnesandnoble.com, or abebooks.com, or even the US Government’s site at bookstore.gpo.gov. Of course, it could be amazon.com, too: The point is that the site shows up more prevalently because other users thought it was relevant, not because it’s name starts with an A. (BTW: These sites are ALL just examples we pulled from thin air… They might not even be listed within our directory, ‘online book stores’ just seemed like a good topic to make an example of.)
To us (Maybe not to you, but to us…) one of the major problems with the big name standard directories is the fact that a site is listed once in a category defined by a standard category list. Your site must fit, sort of, into one of perhaps several thousand different topics, and it’s then displayed there. Cover ‘pay per click advertising, online management, in Orlando Florida’ on your site? You get listed in ‘advertising’, or maybe if you’re lucky, ‘online advertising’. Several thousand topics seems like a lot, right? Nope, not really. Think about the fact that Google is currently spidering several BILLION pages; do you think that all of these pages, or even 10 percent of them, are going to fit into a category list of several thousand topics? Don’t think so. One of the coolest features of using tags as a basis for organization is that they allow you to have a theoretically infinite number of topics, from broad and general like ‘advertising’ to specific, like ‘pay per click advertising, online management, in Orlando Florida’, with sites that meet the criteria for each of these being displayed in both. And our users, or at least customers, get to set what they are. Each time – and guess what, you can choose any tag you want…
Hate irrelevant results when you’re looking for something? We do too. And we think most people do – but directories, staffed by people, are full of them. Sites get listed in a topic that doesn’t really match the site (“But it’s the closest match!” – again, that set list of categories) and you are shown them, probably with the site starting with an A first in line. But here’s the real question: You can see that it’s irrelevant, that it isn’t what you’re looking for. Do you click on it? No. You scroll right by and click on the listing that best matches what you’re after. Problem is, it’ still there tomorrow. Not on tagterms.com. Because our system shows the popularity of a particular link, based on the number of people who clicked on it, sites or pages listed in irrelevant categories are slowly but surely shrunk down until they are nothing but a small little piece of text on the page. And then, when they hit a certain level, they don’t show up at all for that tag. (OK, so maybe within the random displays, you’ll see them once or twice. But the sites in that list are random, that’s how it’s supposed to work!) Easy to skip over, finding only the pieces of information or the sites that you’re after. More relevant. – Much better.
Of course, there are plenty of other cool things that make tagterms.com what it is and work like it works that we’re just not covering here, but you get the idea. To distill it all down, tagterms.com works on a combination of commercial factors (IE: You’ve got to pay to get into the directory) with some of the principles of large social networks (IE: Sites are displayed differently based on popularity) to provide you with what you’re looking for in the most relevant and visually appealing way possible. Stop reading this and play with it some; you’ll get the idea…
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Oh boy, not another ‘organize the world’s information’ type deal? What’s the point?
Nah, we’re not trying to organize the world’s information at all. Google does a great job of that as it is, and we don’t have a few hundred BILLION to compete with them anyway. We’ll let them be… (For now!)
As for the point of it all, well it’s a little experiment. Can a directory based on tags succeed? Can it be 100% commercial? Will it be able to create a critical mass to get visitors and keep them coming back? (It’s kind of important for a site that basis it’s results on user popularity to actually have users, you know?) Will it make money, will it lose money? All of these are great questions, and as of now, there’s no answer. So we set out to find out… Want to come along for the ride? Then jump on the bandwagon and submit your site today! (Sorry, we couldn’t resist the shameless plug there!)
It’s also important to know that this isn’t really the only ‘experiment’ of it’s kind going on right now. The guys over at 1000tags.com came up with the idea of creating the first commercial ‘tag cloud’ about a week before this site went live. In fact they were kind of an inspiration to our birth… Even if it looks like they have since changed their approach a little bit. For more info on this, click here to check out what we have to say about them and how their ‘experiment’ is similar and different from this one.
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Why should I even consider submitting my site? What’s in it for me?
Short answer – Traffic, exposure, visitors, etc. You know the drill…
Long answer – All of the above, and then some more. Obviously, you ended up here. Lot’s of people end up on tagterms.com (even if they don’t end up RIGHT here), and we hope they continue onto our customers sites. And they might actually buy something from you. We’re another method in the exposure arsenal that website publishers have at their disposal; but with a twist. Because we provide our visitors with the ability to interact with the site, they should come back. Again and again and again. Oh yea, and you get to pick your tags. Yes, you heard right, tags with an ‘S’. Up to 10 of them that fit your site like a glove. (Click here for the full details on what you get, how much, etc.) Plus all of the other cool features that we’ve talked about in all those words above this one! (Yup – we’re going to make you read all about us to find out more. It’s kind of important; hopefully you’re supporting not just the traffic to your site, but the entire concept with your purchase of a listing. If not, just go with the ‘short answer’ - you might get some traffic. But if so, spend a little time to read what we have to say – and maybe, just maybe, you’ll see the same thing we do in all of this…)
Little Hint – The tagterms.com site is new. We’re working on building it out. Getting more and more visitors each day. Not many sites listed under some very important tags. Your site could be. In fact it might be the only one for a while. Or one of only a few. Get it? ;-)
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Alright, so you convinced me – What if my site deals with adult content?
Sorry. You’re out of luck for now. tagterms.com is (Hopefully) a mass market project, and without making any judgment on the quality or appropriateness of your site or content, the mass market doesn’t want a bunch of ‘Adult’ words shoved in their faces (OK, so various surveys & articles say they just might want that, but they’ll never admit it, so we won’t either). Maybe we’ll build a separate site or something for that at some point in the future, but for now, we’re not listing adult sites, pages, or tags. If you’ve got a question regarding your site or the tag you want to use, use our contact form to shoot us an e-mail before you submit it and we’ll be happy to let you know whether it’ll be allowed or not.
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How much does it cost?
We’re cheap. Instead of charging you by the character or the tag (All of which are either ideas we kicked around or someone else came up with – and each had their own problems), we just charge you to get in the door. It’s simple; $33.00 gets you a listing with between 3 tags and 10 tags. Your call on how many from that range, but we need three to get you some visitors, and we had to pick a limit somewhere, so 10 it was. That should be good for the vast majority of pages out there. (Seriously, come on, how many different ways do you really say ‘underwater basket weaving’?) Also, a listing is for A SINGLE PAGE. Only the page submitted with your order is included. Want more than one page on your site listed? Then it’s $33.00 per listing, but each listing gets 10 different tags. Make sense?
Get in the game now... Click here to submit your site today!
Little hint #2 – Need more than 10 tags for a single page? You can have between 13 and 20 by submitting the same page with two different orders. Can’t imagine why you would, but that’s there if you need it.
Important Note: Right now, the tagterms.com directory only contains sites that paid for a submission to our directory, and they all start off even. That WILL change, and probably sooner rather than latter. Not talking about any details here, but you should be aware that something’s coming (that will change the face of the site?)! Oh yea, and it MIGHT only be for those who were already in the directory; Oh, the risks we take by not listing our sites…
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What if I want it for free? Can you hook me up?
Not today. It’s a commercial experiment to see if we can get this to work with the results being 100% paid for. Maybe some day in the future we’ll move into a different model, but if you’ve got to pay for it, chances are that you aren’t going to act too badly and submit sites that don’t fit the tags at hand. Or maybe you still will… And then the listing will get removed. And people will complain. And we’ll all argue; can’t we all just get along? Guess that’s part of it. We’ll just have to find out.
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Where did the first tags and sites listed on tagterms.com come from?
Some of you aren’t going to like this answer, but you need to hear it anyway: We had to start the tagterms.com database somewhere with something, and we wanted to keep with the whole 100% commercial concept. So we seeded the site. With affiliate links (ducks and runs!). That’s where.
In all seriousness, take it or leave it we had to make a decision that said yes or no to affiliate links, both to seed the directory with and in the future when people want to list them. Do we say ‘no’, seed the site with random links, and then have people complaining because it’s not what we say it is (100% commercial)? Do we start it with not a single link in the database? None of those seemed like good ideas. So we ‘followed in the footsteps of giants’ and did exactly what the big guys are doing (Google let’s advertisers do it, Yahoo does it themselves) by allowing people to submit affiliate links if they want.
It’s a decision. We made it. It’s out there. We never hid it. And it is what it is…
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This looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes a LOT like 1000tags.com; what’s up?
Well, let’s just get this out of the way first: We’re not them. We have nothing to do with them. We’re not associated with them. And as of this writing, we’ve never even talked to them or had any contact with them whatsoever.
With that in mind, every good idea finds it’s inspiration in something. We found ours in another experiment of using ‘tag clouds’ as a commercial medium, 1000tags.com. In fact, as far as either they or us could tell, they are the first to come up with, and therefore, theoretically, the proof of concept for ‘commercial tag clouds’. If it works. If it’s feasible. Etc. Regardless, obviously we think it’s a good idea, and hopefully it’ll work for them.
That being said, we have / had a few problems with the way that they are approaching the entire concept. Perhaps ‘problems’ isn’t the best way to put it (Sounds harsh, not meant to); we had a few disagreements with their approach, and decided to work on improving the concept a bit, leading to the creation of this site and our own little experiment.
(Important note – 1000tags.com has made some significant changes to their approach since some of the following material was conceived of. Moving from a 100% pay to play model to a much broader themed ‘syndicated tag cloud’ approach with free listings is a major example of this – but that just takes the differences between their site and our site even further apart.)
There are some pretty major differences here as well, with a few of the bigger ones that we feel we’ve addressed being the following in no particular order:
(Remember, none of the following comments are anything other than OUR opinions – nothing more, nothing less.)
Sustainability – It’s a great way to make a bit of money, and it’ll undoubtedly be profitable for the owners of the site, but because of the 1000 tag cap, it seems as though it defeats the purpose of social involvement, will fill up to the limit, and then… Well, we don’t know what would come after that - That’s the whole problem. ;-)
Mass Market Appeal – The tags that are chosen for the limited release of 1000 may or may not be an accurate representation of the internet as a whole, with early adopters forcing the majority of terms to relate to topics they would be interested in but perhaps not the majority of the population. As such, it is conceivable that the traffic to the site would diminish over time as the limit was reached and content relating to products and services the users were after was not added, leading to a decrease in the value to the advertisers / customers of the site, and a general decline in the entire concept.
The Use Of Exclusive Tags On The Main Tag Cloud – Alright, so they saw this one coming and headed it off a bit on their site, calling them ‘part of what we’d like to find out…’ and limiting the number sold to 50 out of 1000. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re there, though. ;-) And, we disagree. The main problem with this is that it removes ALL social interaction from a part of, and creates an artificially inflated overview of, what could conceivably be the most important part of the site – the home page. While maintaining ‘sponsored listings’ within a particular category, assuming that they are clearly labeled as such, may be an acceptable alternative, including them (And allowing their appearance to be wholly determined by the advertiser and / or the amount they are willing to spend) on the home page of the site / or the main tag cloud is not, in our opinion.
The Use Of NO Visitor Interaction In Any Of The Displays – This one is pretty self explanitory. The only thing that 1000tags.com is measuring or using as a basis for display on the site is the number of advertisers that are willing to spend money on a listing. No end user / visitor interaction whatsoever. Not necessarily a problem, per se, and it may be that this is all they are after. We, however, took a different approach to the social involvement aspect, including it as a major portion of our displays and staying closer to the original ‘tagging’ concept.
The Sale of Tags ‘By The Letter’ Or Even Just The Sale of Tags – Last but not least on our list regards the sale of tags themselves, whether they be whole or by the letter. Currently 1000tags.com sells access to specific tags only by the letter (When tags are sold – As noted above, they have moved to a less ‘pay to play’ model and more to a free model), with the price of a listing based on the length of the tag. Again, we found issue with this; a tag is a descriptor or in this case the equivalent to a directory category. However, the majority of sites out there fit not into just one category, but often into multiple very specific categories. By selling a tag as the item of sale, and not the listing, one greatly limits the amount of exposure and relational value across multiple tags (See our example of ‘Pay Per Click Advertising’ above). Of course, an advertiser could, theoretically, purchase multiple tags, but this leads to a skewing of the data as pages are less likely to be included in multiple categories as advertisers are then not on a ‘level playing field’ (IE: Those with less money / budget to spend on advertising overall choose not to purchase more than one, leading to wealthier / better known sites being more prevelant) .
So, obviously, we’re looking at this a little differently than they might be. Doesn’t mean our approach is better, doesn’t mean theirs is either. It just means that, while there definitely is some overlap between the two sites, and we’re fully admitting we were inspired by their site, there are some major differences as well.
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Who are you guys? (AKA: Is Amazon.com sponsoring this little experiment?)
Nah, Amazon.com isn’t sponsoring this little project of ours (That’s a little ‘tongue and cheek’ comment – Don’t get it? Click here). Neither is Google, or Yahoo, or AOL, or WalMart, or Sal’s Corner Grocery Store. (Although Sal, if you’re out there: Want to buy some equity?)
For now, we’re just a single guy and his website (See, now we have we!) sitting in a kind of cold basement in upstate New York with a bunch of monitors and other computer equipment, trying to come up with cool ideas for sites and projects. Some people would call him an SEO, some people would call him an Internet Marketing Consultant (Such a fancy title!), some people would call him an entrepreneur – You can call him DS. That’s enough info and will have to do for now. Want to talk to him? Just use the contact form to shoot an e-mail on over to us and we’ll take it from there.
