Tag Clouds Are Bad (Usually)

Tag clouds started showing up three or four years ago on sites that use folksonomies to organize and describe content. I've never liked them, but only recently have I been asked to justify that sensibility. So here's my rationale:

Here's one from Flickr, one of my most favoritest web sites:

 

Tag Clouds Are Unreadable (Usually)

I've heard more than one designer complain about how unreadable tag clouds are, and even better, how "ugly." 

I'd have to agree: Tag clouds are absolutely both unreadable and, yes, ugly. Seriously, I want to avert my eyes! And I have good vision--if I find tag clouds illegible, I can hardly be the only one. I haven't seen an actual study of the accessibility of tag clouds. Anyone?

 

Tag Clouds Convey Meaningless Information (Usually)

Legibility aside, let's take a closer look. The idea of the tag cloud is that it adds layers of information to the simple list of tags applied to the content objects in the system. The bigger the font size of an individual tag in the cloud, the greater the number of content objects with the tag attached. At a glance, you can get a sense of the topical landscape of the system, including where the most content is concentrated.

But is the relative volume of objects attached to individual tags helpful? Meaningful? I guess maybe, a little, in some cases. Is it worth the legibility trade-off? I have to think, at least most of the time, it's not.

Individual site visitors have an individual thing of most interest at a given time. In most cases, the task is to help them find that thing as easily as possible. The relative volume of tag use doesn't help, and the varying font sizes in a tag cloud make it harder to scan, decreasing ease of use.

 

Tag Clouds Obscure the Difference Between Noise and Signal (Usually)

One of the strengths of folksonomies is partially in redundancy of tags. Folksonomies accommodate many alternative ways of describing, as opposed to controlled vocabularies, which rely on universal understandability of "official" labels. Folksonomies even address issues related to common misspelling of tags, and they grow and change organically, responding to emerging vocabularies. These virtues are particularly valuable in the context of search.

But in a tag cloud format, that strength turns into a weakness. All that redundancy becomes visual noise, and the topical landscape turns out to be skewed toward the most ambiguous tags, which appear in many forms, and the least ambiguous, which appear largest. Not only do they not convey meaning about the system, they actually mislead.

 

Alphabetization Is Not Helpful (Usually)

That's not all. The alphabetical ordering of tags in the tag cloud is effectively meaningless. Alphabetized lists only make sense when users know the name of the thing they're looking for. And in a folksonomic system, agreement about descriptive terms isn't the goal. So in most cases, alphabetizing tag clouds is the same as randomizing them. No meaning is added.

I looked around for a tag cloud ordered by currency of use, but I couldn't find one. That kind of approach would at least add meaning--and I still think that particular piece of meaning wouldn't, most of the time, be relevant.

 

There Are Exceptions (Theoretically)

Having said all that, I also think it's perfectly reasonable to think there could be cases where a tag cloud might be rendered legibly, conveying meaningful and relevant information to a highly-acclimated audience. And given rocket propulsion, pigs could fly.

But maybe that's not fair. There really could be outlying cases of tag clouds making sense, perhaps with some kind of filter reducing noise, sufficient white space aiding legibility, a display of relative popularity of individual tags adding value, and in a context where either labels are familiar or currency is the higher-priority piece of information. Or maybe someone's done tag clouds differently, with different rules governing how tags are displayed.

Anyone have a great example of a tag cloud working perfectly? I'd really love to know about it!

Comments

[Phil Barrett]

I find the tag cloud on my delicious page helpful as a way to visually search the taxonomy of my saved links.

Having said that, they are all my links - so they have more relevance to me than a random tag cloud on somebody else's blog.

Thoughts?

[Ryan]

You know, I still think tag clouds are bad information design, and that the closer you look the worse they are, and at the same time I'm really interested that people (Phil, you're not alone) say they like them. What exactly is it that's so likable?

Are they just sort of cool to people who are comfortable users of "Web 2.0 stuff?" Is the question of whether they're meaningful irrelevant when you're talking about folksonomy-aware audiences?

I hate to think the answer is yes, but it wouldn't be the first time I've seen something nonsensical or irrational turn out to be usable when you try it out with those darn irrational users, darn them.

[Jessyca Frederick]

Unpopular as it makes me, I love them. I find they help me understand the "aboutness" of a site or topic in an at-a-glance manner. I have seen legible ones (at least I can read them), like the one that used to be on the home page of the company I work for. The tag cloud went away because too many people hate them. How can one hate a static UI so much? A list of links is boring and if it contains the same links as the tag cloud, it's not any more or less useful.

[Lanny]

I think saying "all tag clouds are bad" is akin to saying "all web pages are bad." In both cases, there are well-designed and poorly designed examples. Long, long tag clouds are a real turn off for me. I just want to avert my eyes they are so ugly, as well as difficult to interpret. But I have seen examples of very short, clear tag clouds that give you an instant read on what a website is all about. I don't feel that tag clouds are always appropriate for every type of web content. But they do have a place.