Keywords: individual or hierarchy?

How are folks using keywords? What are the advantages and disadvantages in using just the individual keyword vs. the whole heirarchy?

My keyword list uses a heirarcy that may be 5 or 6 keywords deep, in some cases.

If you don’t select to apply the whole hierarchy, you won’t be able to search on any of the intermediate keywords from other software.

I see. But would you be able to search on the intermediate keywords from within PhotoLab?

As far as I can remember, yes. But I use my own app, which is far more powerful.