Is this a contradiction?

• 

  rgkillam · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:03 pm

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  I was reading through the FAQs to find out about categories, tags and driving traffic to my blog. I feel like I either found a contradiction or I’m not understanding something. This is what I found:

  TITLE: The difference between tags and categories
  SUB-HEADING: Is there any advantage to using tags or categories or both?
  ANSWER: Not here at WordPress.com and not for any search engines, no.

  vs.

  TITLE: How do I get more views and traffic?
  SUB-HEADING: Use appropiate tags
  ANSWER: Attach appropiate categories and tags to your entries and people may find your blog through those. Be careful not to use too many tags though — between 5 and 10 tags (or categories or both) is a good number. The more tags you use, the less likely your post will be featured in the WordPress.com tag listings.

  I dunno, but to me, I would think there is a huge advantage to using tags since that’s how I find good blogs from WordPress.com’s homepage. Does WordPress not monitor or update their FAQ’s pages very often? They seem kind of stagnant and outdated.

• 

  thesacredpath · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:05 pm

  • Copy link

  Both tags and categories are treated the same by search engines. To them they are the same.

  Both tags and categories are listed in the wordpress.com global tags pages.

• 

  thesacredpath · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:07 pm

  • Copy link

  If one person posted with a tag of bunny, and another posted with a category of “bunny” they would both show up at http://wordpress.com/tag/bunny/ .

• 

  raincoaster · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:17 pm

  • Copy link

  And if you use more than a dozen or so tags, you risk getting permanently barred from those global tag/category pages. Once someone’s reported you for tag spamming, staff takes a look and they may give you a warning or they may just POOF take you off those pages for that post and all subsequent ones. Don’t push it; a dozen is a safe number. Fifteen? Who knows?

• 

  panaghiotisadam · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:21 pm

  • Copy link

  @rgkillam: it’s not very well phrased, but it’s not a contradiction. The second item explains the advantage of using categories or tags, while the first refers to the DIFFERENCE between the two: it tries to say that actually there is no difference, i.e. that the advantage is the same, no matter if you use categories or tags or both.

• 

  thesacredpath · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 6:23 pm

  • Copy link

  It might be easier to think of tags as sub-categories by another name.

• 

  rgkillam · Member · Aug 12, 2008 at 7:08 pm

  • Copy link

  thanks thesacredpath, raincoaster and panaghiotisadam. I finally understand my confusion and further understand that categories and tags are virtually the same within the global community of WordPress and the internet.