The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger

Have you wondered when you should use the search box, and when you should click on a label or an entry in a tag cloud? Which one will give you better results when you are trying to find something on a Blogger/ Blogspot blog?

When you understand the difference between the two it can help guide you. These two choices are also the basis for how to build a Category Tree in Blogger/ Blogspot, which I am going to explain in my next post.

The search box, in the upper left-hand corner searches only the text of the blog. It is not case sensitive, and it will return posts which include all the words you enter, in any order. You can also filter, as in camera - canon will return all posts that include the word camera, but not the word Canon. It will NOT find posts which are labeled camera, but which do not contain the word camera in the text.

The other sorting choice available to readers is to click on a label. All the posts which carry that label will be presented. There are four ways bloggers may show labels:

1. Some bloggers don't use labels at all (all bloggers should as it helps search engines find their content).
2. Some bloggers offer a list, or partial list of their labels in one of the sidebars.
3. Some bloggers offer a tag cloud, where the labels are displayed with their relative size indicating the number of posts so labeled.
4. Some few bloggers actually use labels to build a category tree

Labels tell you a lot about a blogger, because if there is any kind of list you will know at a glance what topics are important to the person. You will know what the blog is really about, no matter what their header may say.

Labels are only as valuable as the care with which the blogger applied them. If a blogger wrote a post about Pull-Ups Diapers, and labeled it with Diapers, but not with Potty Training (when such a label had already been created), then someone who clicked the Potty Training Label would not be shown the post about the Pull-Ups.

Used correctly, labels can be powerful.

Category Tree Tutorial Index