What are the "Tags"?

[Southern by choice]

What are the "tags" for and how do you use them?
This feature was added when I was away sick.

It use to be so and so "Tagged" you in a post now that says mentioned... so I see this row of tags and can't figure it out.

Computer illiterate here.

Thanks.

 

[OneFineAcre]

@Southern by choice
I think that is a tag

 

[Goat Whisperer]

There are also tags for a thread. I'm not sure if it is to help when someone searches something on the site or?

Take a look at the tags under the thread title.
http://www.backyardherds.com/threads/the-education-of-ben.31911/page-12

@Support, @Sumi, @Nifty, Maybe y'all could explain?

 

[Latestarter]

Tags are like "keywords" in a document to aid in searching. I may have a title that reads "Dogs in the woods" that talks about different parasites they pick up there like ticks, leeches, etc. that would otherwise not show up in a basic search as they are not in the title. By adding those as keywords, a search of those particular words would pick up my document and add it to the search results.

 

[Southern by choice]

@Latestarter Thank You!
Ok so lets say I have a thread... um something like LGD's
and I was mentioning the stages of development...
how would I tag it?

 

[Latestarter]

Well, you could say "puppy" or "young LGD" "adolescent LGD dog" or really any term that a person might search for that your article addresses... If you look over to the right where is says "users online now" you'll see a group titled "robots". These are search engines that are going through the site cataloging everything here (primarily by tags) to enter into their search data bases. Typically it works best with single words, but in some cases three or four single words can be "strung" together like "LGD" "stages" "development" If someone searches for "LGD stages of development" viola'! your site will get top billing, unless some other site has those same tags and has been clicked on many times before you. The tags do not have to be in any specific order, although being IN order does help.

 

[Southern by choice]

 

[Baymule]

Nifty requested that we place key words in the titles of our posts that would alert the "robots" and bring more people to the site.

 

[babsbag]

Robots are scary. I understand it all as I am an IT Director/engineer turned dairy owner but that doesn't mean I really like all those little robots snooping on me.

 

[Nifty]

Here's all the info you could want about "tags" in the Xenforo software we use: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/thread-tagging.100267/