Jiglu Introduces Auto-Tagging For Blogs

Tags have long been an integral feature of many web 2.0 services and, although some believe that tagging may be having a negative effect on the drive towards the semantic web, the use of tags has continued to spread. For example, Wordpress 2.3 (the latest version of the popular blogging platform) now includes tagging support by default, without any plugin.

But what about existing blogs that never had tags previously, but would like to add them. Going through each post one by one, adding specific tags to each would be an extremely overwhelming task for a blog that has 100 pre-existing posts.

This is where Jiglu comes in to ease the process for bloggers, as a service that promises to “automatically create intelligent tags and links for your web content” through only 3 simple steps.

By auto-tagging your blog, Jiglu aims to allow bloggers to help their readers “dive straight in and read what they want - your most popular blog entries or even stuff buried deep within your site.” It scans a user's blog, discovers relevant tag words, then matches those results to keywords designed to improve SEO.

This is all completed on-the-fly through the Jiglu widget, which users must install after registering their blog at the Jiglu homepage. The widget supports most blogging platforms available, including Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, and others. Vox, however, does not currently work with Jiglu, as it puts widgets into a container, which appears to be an independent page from the blog to the Jiglu system. Since this problem lies within the blogging platform and not the widget, Vox would have to correct this error.

Using AJAX, Jiglu displays an embedded window which displays a blog's tags when visitors click 'View Tag Map' from the widget (as shown in the screenshot). Clicking on any tag then shows the posts related to that topic or keyword.

You can see Jiglu in action on blogs that have already adopted the widget, such as Ignite Seattle!, Loose Wire, and mBites.

Similar services are available from Wizag and Answers.com, although the latter, known as AnswerLink, only suggests that keywords link to pages on the Answers.com website.