Graphic Rating

Is the Tag Cloud dead?

• by Andy Gongea
• Nov 13, 2008
• 2 Comments »

Right now, Graphic Rating is finishing the 4th version of its user interface. During the design period I had some doubts regarding the use of the blog tag cloud. I still have this doubt. On many blogs you can still find this tag component, while the most famous ones don’t use it. I wonder why???

I can’t tell you the reasons, but I believe that most of the popular blogs like: Techcrunch, Venture Beat or GigaOm consider the use of the tag cloud a waste of space. That is because big blogs can use that surface for additional advertising. So I believe it is natural to monetize your content instead of just using the space for an additional navigation system. In comparison, the blogs that don’t have many visitors like Techcrunch ( for example Graphic Rating ), usually are comfortable with the use of the tag cloud. Although some times, the tag cloud can be hard to stylize.

Let’s take the navigation reason for the tag cloud. Some people say that a tag cloud is an additional navigation system for a blog and also an alternative to the search box. The truth is that you can’t cover all the content with a tag cloud of 60 words, and for sure every article is important in a blog. So the question is:

Question: Is the tag cloud dead?
Answer: I believe that tag cloud is living its last days on the web and soon other component will take its place. Of course that it will not be eradicated, but the use of tag cloud will have a very strong decrease.

From the design point of view the tag cloud can be seen as a tool. For example, the Wordle service will still be successful because it is well implemented and has nice features. For sure I will still use Wordle in my future work and you should try it too. But regarding the blog feature, I believe I will not use it.

And with this post, Graphic Rating is saying Goodbye to the tag cloud. We consider that it is no longer needed and it will be disabled from Graphic Rating’s interface.

Cheers!