14. technorati all the time

Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts.

Although I haven't used tags in this blog, I have used them in my other blogs, and it is true that they drive traffic to your site. After posting about losing one of my dogs, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, to cancer, I noticed a number of page viewers had been directed there via searches on "corgi" and "lymphoma." Knowing that others were reading about my experiences with a sick pet, I felt like I wasn't alone in having endured that ordeal. In a way, it made me feel that I was part of an unofficial community of corgi owners whose pets had gone through what my Holly experienced.

More to the point of library research, I mostly use Google's blog search when I want to browse what others are posting on controversial topics. Several years ago, when an overly zealous customer was trying to convince MCPL to remove Walter Mosley's erotic novel, Killing Johnny Fry, from our collections, I did some searches on its title and "censorship," to see if the book had been challenged in other library systems. While there were a few concerns expressed about its content, most librarian and bookseller blogs harped on the fact that the book had been panned by critics.

Moral indignation and critical condemnation can also be found in abundance from searching for 50 Shades of Grey. I found some of the blogger diatribes against this book infinitely more entertaining than the novel itself, which I couldn't bring myself to finish.