Totally agree with you!
I need to write an article about optimizing for search/retrieval. I touched on that on my article about tagging [1], but it deserves more explanations :p
I do not use tagging yet.
I did not grasp the power of it yet.
Probably because the search in obsidian does not propose any tag oriented clutering of the results. Or any other feature where the tagging is inherently visible and accessible.
You can filter search results using tags in Obsidian: "something tag:#work"
I rely on tags for different things: search, automation (e.g., move notes to folder X if tag A is present), indexes (https://dsebastien.net/blog/2022-05-15-maps-of-content), random exploration of my notes (e.g., open a random note with tag X).
I will try to test Dataview and the query language of obsidian.
But honestly, if it is not in direct relationship with search, or if it makes the note authoring process to go in pause to think about which tag is relevant or which new tag could help, I will probably not use them much.
[1]: https://dsebastien.net/blog/2022-05-17-why-and-how-to-tag-no...