Randomly generated tag clouds

Jun 27, 2007

Tag clouds are those highlighted and dimmed tags/categories you often encounter on various blogs and websites. The most read categories, or the categories with maximum posts under them, get the maximum emphasis. Tag clouds are a good way of telling your visitors what are your greater interests and what posts the visitors on your blog or website read the most.

But the problem with such tag clouds is that their emphasis is governed by the number of posts you’ve written under particular tags or by the number of times the posts have been read. This is a good way, but sometimes lots of important posts are neglected merely because they don’t belong to a “popular” tag, or many people haven’t read them yet. They’ll very soon get buried under the more popular posts.

The Focus cloud concept [ link via Focus Cloud [concept] ] counters this problem by leaving the highlighting to “god”, that is, your items are randomly highlighted. This works well if your blog or website doesn’t have lots of irrelevant content (you shouldn’t anyway have irrelevant content but sometimes we cannot help it). Some bloggers post 5-6 less important posts and then a couple of important posts every week and if their tag clouds are generated randomly, the important posts won’t get the desired exposure.

I still prefer the first method of managing your tag clouds. The first method, dictated by performance and content, makes sure the good, popular posts get more exposure. Of course, its downside is that sometimes posts that don’t deserve much fanfare get maximum exposure due to some search engine quirk or time-based relevance, or even fad value. A good solution would be a tag cloud that is driven by the popularity factor, but can also be controlled by the publisher.

Update: Aaron from http://foobr.co.uk/ just posted a comment saying:

Hi, I think you picked up my post wrong. I wrote my version of the Focus Cloud as I was annoyed at other people’s ‘random’ implementations.

Instead my concept uses a points system which ensures that the most recent tags (your current focus) are given an extra ‘boost’ so that they can perform on an equal footing with more established tags.

Aaron makes perfect sense. According to Aaron’s idea of generating tag clouds the most recent posts too get some exposure so that they get the initial needed push. But I wasn’t referring to his post when I wrote about the tag cloud being generated randomly. I mentioned that I got random tag cloud link via his blog.

More links on tag clouds:

• Tag Clouds for Democratic Debate
• Tag clouds - what they are with examples
• What Does Your Tag Cloud Say About You?
• The Usefulness of Tag Clouds

Technorati Tags: tag clouds, random tag clouds

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Randomly generated tag clouds”

1. Aaron Bassett
   June 27th, 2007 at 5:33 am

   Hi, I think you picked up my post wrong. I wrote my version of the Focus Cloud as I was annoyed at other people’s ‘random’ implementations.

   Instead my concept uses a points system which ensures that the most recent tags (your current focus) are given an extra ‘boost’ so that they can perform on an equal footing with more established tags.

   If you look at the source code I posted with it you can see that the most recent posts receive additional points and those tags which are used constantly actually lose points, ensuring that focus is applied to the correct tags

2. Amrit
   June 27th, 2007 at 5:48 am

   Hi Aaron. Thanks for your input. I’ve clarified the point in the post itself.

Leave a Reply

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail