Why Social Bookmarking Is The New Search Engine

By Author: Arijit Roul
Total Articles: 64
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Most people look at social bookmarking as just tagging photos and seeing things others found interesting. This is far from all it is capable of doing. Have you ever searched for something and ended up with dozens or hundreds of pages that don’t relate to the search except having a few words? I have had that happen more than a few times. I have also been guilty of thinking of social bookmarking as a useless tool to make people feel important. However, we can do better searching with social bookmarking that with search engines if things are done right. It is not even that hard to accomplish. Here are a few reasons why.

The Art Of Tagging

Have you ever tagged something online? I’m pretty sure most of us have. Tagging ends up helping a lot of people searching for something particular. Every time you tag something you leave enough for other people to draw conclusions of what was tagged. Tagging is actually one of the biggest helping hands that could ever be given to social bookmarking, as it helps people see what they’re looking at for what it is. That, in and of itself, is one of the best things people could ...
... do for each other on the internet.

Why Is Tagging So Important?

Tagging is one of the most used search parameters for the services used. You can set informal tags for people to view your bookmarks with. You can also search for bookmarks tied to a specific tag. Considering all tags are made by people who are browsing the internet, you get the information from someone who understands what the information is about as a whole. Search engines use software so it finds information without comprehending the content itself. That is what makes using social bookmarking services a much more advanced searching option for specifics than using search engines.

What Else Is Used For Searching?

There are a couple of things that cause the most help to searching this way. It may seem that I only refer to tagging, but that seems the most important way. The rest just don’t seem as interesting, or as well know.

• Metadata in the bookmark is used to get the most common information on the linked page.
• Tagging, of course, tells you what everyone who has seen it thinks it relates to through the keywords used.
• Social tagging causes a link to the most commonly used keywords used in tags.

While this seems like a few unimportant things, the more people that contribute to it the more informative it becomes. This can lead you to what you want by painting a giant target on it.

You may not get millions of results for what you search for, but you will get searches that relate specifically what you want. Isn’t that something we all want, to get what we are looking for immediately? Social bookmarking is doing a great job of showing what that looks like.