Tagging the Web

TVC Alert reported on an interesting thought about further indexing the web. TVC Alert writes "Can Tagging Improve Free Web Search? (31 Mar) Citing a conference paper on the topic, Phil Bradley asserts that social tagging could go a long way toward improving traditional Web search. I think it's a potential worth exploring. I've been impressed with the use of tags in search results in smaller experiments such as LibraryThing.
Phil also shares a tip for finding tagged information at del.icio.us. I'd like to add that the following format automatically generates an RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/[insert your tag here]."

Yahoo tried to do something like this in the early days with their human indexers. Their idea was good and their implementation was great, because they considered consistency to be important. So, I don't think the reemergence of this idea is crazy at all, but I worry about the taxonomy piece. What about the variations in terms e.g."social networking sites" vs. "SNS"? Is anyone going to link them? If they aren't linked, you will have to do additional searches in order to be convinced that you have done your search work thoroughly. I think the message is to tag pages if you have the opportunity and we'll have to see how the search piece shakes out.