How important are tags on blogs?

[csmm]

Hi,

I've always used tags on blogs, but I've noticed that some prominent and reputable blogs (e.g., SEOmoz blog, Problogger, Copyblogger) are no longer using tags at the end of each post. I'm curious about what is the reason for this - any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Carolina

[CaseyKluver]

I have never used tags, mainly because I have never seen any point to them. Tags are basically categories, so why not just create a category instead? I understand you can get more specific with tags in some cases.

The main reason I dont use them is because they also make tag-based archive pages, which in most cases look like like your category-based archive pages and blog archive pages, making just another duplicate page for search engines to crawl.

[csmm]

Thanks for the response. I usually no-indexed the tag archives so that they won't be crawled.