AMERICANS conduct nearly 200 million Internet searches every day. Now, several companies want to make that process better by transforming the way people look for and store information they find online.
The new method, dubbed "tagging," addresses a common complaint of many Internet users -- that searching is often clumsy and inefficient. Web surfers often must sift through multiple pages of search results to find what they are looking for. And retrieving the best sites a second time often means redoing the search or trolling through an unorganized list of sites that you have haphazardly saved in a "favorites" folder.
Tagging, however, can cut through the online clutter to deliver more relevant bits of information. That is because many versions allow users to search only sites that other people have already deemed useful. It also makes it easier to find desired information again. Users says tagging services can simplify online endeavors like shopping for a new road bike or acoustic guitar because they allow a prospective buyer to quickly access saved information.
While tech-heads have been using the method for the past year or so, tagging is now moving into the mainstream. Silicon Valley heavyweights -- along with a number of new upstarts -- are now putting major resources into developing tagging services. Last month, Yahoo Inc. bought the popular tagging site Del.icio.us (pronounced "delicious"). Now, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company says it plans to allow Del.icio.us users to access their tagged links through My Web 2.0, Yahoo's own tagging site.
One new site, Shadows.com, allows individuals to save their favorite Web sites under keywords that others can also search. The site, launched last October by the co-founders of Pluck Corp., based in Austin, Texas, attracts more than 275,000 unique monthly visitors, according to comScore Networks. Last week, iLor LLC of Lexington, Ky., launched PreFound.com. Like other bookmarking sites, it allows its users to upload pages they want to save into their own profiles or share them with the public.
Yahoo's Flickr.com, which allows anyone to upload photos from their camera phone or computer to the Web and then store them in a digital album that others can search by the keyword tags, is another early tagging success.
While tagging is still new and the method does have limitations, analysts are predicting further growth in "the tagosphere" as new companies crop up to grab a share of the nearly $15 billion online-advertising market. Tagging sites are free to use, but some run advertisements which display small snippets of ad text targeted to the terms a user is searching for or other words on the page.
Tagging sites are increasingly transitioning beyond places individuals go to for retrieving their favorite Web pages to sites they visit first when they want to search the Internet. That means they are beginning to compete directly with search behemoths such as Google and Yahoo. A Google Inc. spokesman says the company doesn't comment on its competition. "These systems are really coming into the mass market," says Caterina Fake, director of Yahoo Search technology.
Demand for the new sites reflect many Web surfers frustration with current search technology. The major search engines are all built around different algorithms that attempt to determine the most relevant sites for a particular search. But only 17% of Internet users say they always find what they are looking for when they use a search engine, according to a 2005 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In November, Americans conducted more than five billion online searches, up 9% from the previous year, according to comScore Networks.
Tagging services have multiple uses. First, they allow Web surfers to save hundreds (or even thousands) of favorite Web pages under key words. The technology is named after the keyword "tags" users associate with each page they want to save. (For example, a Web page featuring ski goggles could be saved under the tag, skiing.) For individual users, tagging makes their own favorite pages easy to search and retrieve. Unlike storing addresses in a "favorites" folder on your computer, tagged pages are stored on the Web and accessible from any computer. A tagging site also lets you search among all your stored pages by key word, eliminating the need to scroll through dozens of sites and remember the order in which your links are saved.
There are two main ways to tag a Web site. Del.icio.us, for instance, will ask you to enter the Web address of the site you want to save into a field on its page and to click "save." The site, along with many others, also allows you download a toolbar to your desktop. While Web surfing, you can add pages to your account simply by clicking on the toolbar.
Companies say the greatest benefit of tagging -- and the reason why big Internet companies are adopting it -- is that tagging sites often allow users to make their list of tags and sites available to and searchable by either a closed community of friends and family or all other Web surfers. So, instead of searching the entire Web, users can limit their forays to an edited universe of pages others have already tagged as interesting or helpful. Also, many tagging services include the kind of social-networking features that have made sites such as MySpace.com and Friendster so popular: Users can post comments or vote on the usefulness of sites that others have tagged.
While most tagging sites allow you to tag pages on any topic, some sites are built around a theme. Kaboodle.com is a tagging site for the online shopper that allows users to save Web pages displaying items they are considering purchasing. Through buttons they add to their Internet toolbar, users can turn any product Web page, from a book on Amazon.com to clothing on eBay, into an entry on their personal Kaboodle page where others can rate and comment on the item.
There are some downsides to the new sites. Unlike a typical search engine, the effectiveness of tagging services depends on the quality and quantity of the people who save pages to them. Also, generally users have to use the same tags in order for a search to capture all the relevant pages. (For example, if you search for sites under the tag "winter boots," you could miss out on applicable pages that were tagged under "shoes.")
Some users complain that not enough people are tagging for it to be worth their while. Indeed, even the most popular sites generate less than 1% of Google's monthly traffic. But they're growing fast: Some, such as Shadows.com, are doubling their number of sign-ups every month.
When Mark Johnson of San Jose, Calif., wants to learn more about a company that he hears about in the news, he has largely stopped going to Yahoo, where he says it may take him up to ten different searches to find what he needs. Instead, the 27-year-old, who works for Internet start-up Kosmix.com, goes to Wink.com, a site that lets users search pages others have already tagged. While he still visits Yahoo, often by default, he says he uses Wink.com for restaurant recommendations and for other searches where human recommendations play an important role.
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