Google and Tag Clouds?

[drang3d]

I've been reading that apparently google loves tag clouds although I havent really come across anything to confirm this.

# Google loves Tag Clouds - meaning HIGHER SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS!
# Greatly helps Google index your site

Anybody care to comment?

[Micheal Pannell Realtor]

what is a tag cloud

[drang3d]

http://microformats.org/wiki/tagcloud-examples

[BrandonSternfield]

I see that being good for our blogs, but besides that, not really good for a real estate website. It would look tacky and weird.

Maybe possible on a locations or properties page to have it, if you work with many many cities? Having the cities with the most listings as the more weighted terms, and the cities with the least the least weighted? And sort that cloud alphabetically?

[Graeme]

Tag clouds really came into there own with the whole web 2.0 thing. For certain markets they have almost become a standard.

I think they help SEO if you use it sparingly. They create additional KW rich links pointing to your interior pages. They also help users find content that they otherwise may not discover. Whether they fit your target audience is another question.

I have never tested using tag clouds but what is the difference between a tag cloud and KW link stuffing?

[Sam Dodd]

They just look like spam to me. I see sites on DP selling tag cloud links all the time so there may be a little truth to google likes them but its probally more related to the fact that they are anchor text targeted links pointed at your site.

[BrandonSternfield]

If there is a time when you would put a lot of links (using my old example of cities), I see it feasible to make it a tag cloud again.

There is no rule saying a tag cloud has to be an unorganized mess of links. You can make a vertical pretty list.

[drang3d]

Yeah I agree with you Brandon. I'm currently developing an international real estate site, so I can see the benefit there. Bu also as was said earlier, if you have articles on your site, it would be good to have one on those pages, to add that little advantage (don't know how much advantage but we climb this ladder one step at a time!). Increase traffic to your article pages = increase traffic to your overall site.

[BrandonSternfield]

Aye, but what better way to keep track of the tags you use to sort your articles?

Why use that boring side bar with the tag name, and the number? Instead just use a tag cloud.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then here ya go: almost all blogs let you categorize or tag your blogs/articles. Article A is about Real Estate, Article B is about schools etc. By clicking that link usually, it will take you to all articles/posts with that tag.

Instead of displaying the number of posts per tag, you could use a vertical tag cloud to display. Simply list them alphabetically, and use a percentage. If you have 20 total articles, and lets assume each article can only have one tag, then make it (numberofarticleswithtag*1/numberofarticles) * maxemphasis. Of course that isn't how you code it, but you see what I mean

This would make the most popular tags 'pop out' at the reader.

[Smuck]

Be careful on tag clouds. There are many people out there buying expired domains that still have a PR. They set up a tag cloud, or a blog, or a blog with a tag cloud, and sell links (maybe trade links). Well, once the the PR is updated it is now a PR0 (actually, it was a PR0 to begin with, but the datacenters still have the old PR record). The links end up being relatively worthless. When doing business with a tag cloud site, check the whois info first. IMHO