I'm not familiar enough with WordPress or TypePad tagging/labeling systems but know they were considered better than Blogger because of the benefits to natural search. As I look at how they work though, I'm surprised that they don't cause duplicate content problems for engines in that the labels merely create separate pages for each label, that page featuring all the posts labels as such. For example, I have 3 posts on my blog and label them: 1. music, movies, oscars 2. movies, oscars 3. music, movies Labels will create a movies.html page. Post 1 will appear on the homepage, that movies.html page, AND music.html and oscars.html labels pages. 4 different pages have the exact same post. Granted, each label page will have different posts but the content is replicated throughout. What would happen if I also labeled each of those 3 posts as "harrison_ford"? Now I'd have a harrison_ford.html and that page would feature all three posts; effectively, the same as my main page. Is there a certain way labels need to be used to ensure you don't inadvertently create duplicate content? Am I worrying over nothing?
I have been wondering the same. I started using Blogger Labels recently, and a lot of blog posts vanished from google index afterwards. Wondering if it is because of the post content being repeated in the label pages and archive pages entirely.
I use them not so much because they are of SEO benefit, but because they facilitate easy navigation. People are more likely to return to a well organised site than a mish mash of high entropy garbage.
Thanks CountryBoy though I don't disagree with you. I'm using them for the same reason but there is no value in facilitating navigation if I don't have an audience. I'd reconsider their value if I knew they hurt my placement in search.
Many or perhaps most applications and programs lack the ability to recognize the duplicity of which you speak in this post. This is exactly the type of logic that leave humans at the top rung on the internet ladder. Human-powered logic is very difficult to build into an application and because of this writers continue to be in high demand on the internet in terms of web development. Even smart machines are not always intelligent. Perhaps you could try using only one label for each post and then define your categories using the labels explicit to each. It would likely remove the overlap you are referring to. Otherwise, 2 labels unless you limit them by categorizing -filtering- will always have a tendency to show up twice or three times depending on the number you use.