This post if slightly off topic, and more on a general blogging and internet issue – tagging.

Over the last three months, I thought I would listen to the top bloggers, and get right into tagging, just to see what all the fuss is about. I have been diligently tagging my posts in Technorati since then. One of the most popular tags in my posts, given the subject matter, is online banking. The results in Technorati, are nothing short of useless; in fact worse than useless.

Perhaps because I have picked a popular topic, but the degree of spam blogging that Technorati seem to be incapable of eliminating, makes the "online+banking" tag worthless. I have posted the first page from Technorati below. The first post is from the excellent Payment News. Every other link on that page is spam. These are blogs set up by SEO types to get their brand to the top. Well good for Bank of America today, but the credibility of what Technorati is intended to provide is so shot, that no consumers will come to this tag to find you anyway.

This is the email equivalent of spam, and could kill tags unless someone figures it out. Technorati ned to find a way to incorporate intelligence and personal sorting so that I can locate what I want, and my neighbour can find what they want, and so on.

For now, Technorati is the worst of old style marketing.

 Update (22.jun.2006):

Over at Seth's Blog he points out the same issue at FURL.

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Technorati Tags: online+banking, spamblogs, tag+spam