A survey of tag clouds as tools for information retrieval and content representation

Tag clouds are tools that have been widely used on the Internet since their conception. The main applications of these textual visualizations are information retrieval, content representation and browsing of the original text from which the tags are generated. Despite the extensive use of tag clouds, their enormous popularity and the amount of research related to different aspects of them, few studies have summarized their most important features when they work as tools for information retrieval and content representation. In this paper we present a summary of the main characteristics of tag clouds found in the literature, such as their different functions, designs and negative aspects. We also present a summary of the most popular metrics used to capture the structural properties of a tag cloud generated from the query results, as well as other measures for evaluating the goodness of the tag cloud when it works as a tool for content representation. The different methods for tagging and the semantic association processes in tag clouds are also considered. Finally we give a list of alternative for visual interfaces, which makes this study a useful first help for researchers who want to study the content representation and information retrieval interfaces in greater depth.