Why Blogger’s Character Limit for Tags is Stupid, Frustrating, and Limiting

 When it comes to blogging, tags are supposed to be one of the most useful tools we have. They help categorize posts, make them easier to find, and help readers navigate the site. But on Blogger, tags (or “labels” as they’re called) come with an extremely annoying problem: not only is there a limit on how many tags you can use, but there’s also a total character limit. And that character limit is less than what platforms like YouTube allow for tags. This restriction makes no sense, and for people who run blogs that cover complex topics — like my music blog — it becomes a constant source of frustration.

The purpose of tags should be to help you fully describe your post, so people searching can actually find it. A music discussion post, for example, might cover a specific band, a specific album, a broader genre, a time period, and maybe even a theme. That’s already at least five or six tags that need to be there to capture the essence of the post. But when Blogger forces you to stick to a small character limit, suddenly you’re forced to make compromises. Even one extra character can throw the whole set of tags over the limit, leaving you stuck rethinking your choices. It’s tedious, unnecessary, and it gets in the way of good blogging.

This is where the real stupidity comes in: instead of being able to tag posts properly, you have to start playing games with the system. You shorten tags into riddles or incomplete phrases just to save space. You mash words together with no spaces — so instead of “music discussion,” you have to type “musicdiscussion.” Sometimes you even resort to acronyms that only you know the meaning of, which defeats the whole purpose of tags being useful for discovery. All of this just to avoid hitting Blogger’s ridiculous character ceiling.

The end result? Your tags either look messy, don’t make sense, or are too general to be meaningful. You’re forced to cut corners where you shouldn’t have to. Instead of tagging a post with “Keane,” “indie rock,” “2000s music,” and “song analysis,” you might be forced to settle for just “music” or “blogpost” because that’s all that fits under the limit. That makes posts harder to find, harder to categorize, and honestly, it discourages you from even wanting to bother with tags at all.

Other platforms clearly understand the value of tagging better than Blogger does. YouTube, for example, gives creators far more freedom in choosing tags. Even if not all tags are heavily used in the algorithm anymore, at least they’re there as a tool, and creators can use them effectively. On Blogger, though, you feel handcuffed. You can either have a small handful of good tags or a larger set of incomplete ones that look ridiculous. Neither option feels satisfying.

This problem especially hits niche blogs — like music blogs — the hardest. When you write about bands, genres, decades, and industry trends, you naturally want to cover a wide spread of tags to reflect that. A blog post about a band like Keane might deserve tags like “Keane,” “British rock,” “indie pop,” “alternative,” “2000s,” “song meaning,” and “music video.” That’s already pushing up against the character limit. And if you try to go further and include context like “songwriting” or “music history,” suddenly you’re over the edge and forced to delete something. It’s a battle with the platform every single time you try to post.

The irony is that tags should make blogging easier, not harder. They should give creators the freedom to expand their reach, connect with audiences, and properly organize their work. Instead, Blogger’s restrictions turn tags into a chore. You end up spending more time wrestling with the character count than actually focusing on what matters — the writing.

Blogger is an old platform, and sometimes it feels like its systems are still stuck in the early 2000s internet mindset. Back then, maybe shorter limits made sense to keep the system from breaking. But in 2025, when storage and search technology are vastly more advanced, there’s no reason for a platform as widely used as Blogger to still enforce such tight constraints. It feels outdated and out of touch with what creators need.

If Blogger wants to keep up with the times and remain useful for bloggers of all kinds, it needs to update its tagging system. Either remove the character limit entirely or at least expand it to something more reasonable. Tags should be about discovery, not about squeezing every word into a puzzle box.

Until then, bloggers like me are left doing mental gymnastics every time we try to tag a post. We mash words together, invent acronyms, or strip tags down to the bare minimum, and in the process, we lose the richness that tagging was supposed to provide in the first place. It’s not efficient, it’s not intuitive, and it definitely doesn’t serve the readers.

In the end, Blogger’s character limit for tags isn’t just stupid — it’s actively holding back the platform. It punishes creators who want to be thorough, discourages proper categorization, and forces people into absurd workarounds. For music bloggers, or any bloggers who deal with layered, multifaceted topics, it’s an ongoing headache that shouldn’t even exist.