Search refinement panel categories

Question

Im looking in the search refinement web part, specifically at the filter category definitions and have noticed there are 2 similar categories and im not sure what the difference is.

 <Category    Title="Managed Metadata Columns"    Description="Managed metadata of the documents"    Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator"    MetadataThreshold="3"    NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="3"    MaxNumberOfFilters="20"    ShowMoreLink="True"    MappedProperty="ows_MetadataFacetInfo"    MoreLinkText="show more"    LessLinkText="show fewer" />
 <Category    Title="Tags"    Description="All managed metadata of the documents and social tags"    Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator"    MetadataThreshold="3"    NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="3"    MaxNumberOfFilters="20"    ShowMoreLink="True"    MappedProperty="ows_MetadataFacetInfo,popularsocialtags"    MoreLinkText="show more"    LessLinkText="show fewer" />

Can someone explain the differences in these. All my managed meta data tags are displayed under the tags category. What makes them display under this category and not the other category

Answer 1

As you can see if you look closely at the two, the "Tags" option includes the Managed Metadata Columns but also social tags.

The social tags are not, to the user at least, managed metadata columns but are actually tags your users have either entered or their Personal Site or (mostly for 2013) tagged their Social feed messages with.

More about Social Tags here

The Managed Metadata Columns by default renders different refiners depending on what you are searching on, and what the items are tagged with. To add your own metadata columns as separate refiners see this link. This will make sure that they are visible when you want them to be