Comments on: Guest Post – Sizing Up the Long Tail of Search

By: mitch

mitch — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:53:58 +0000

we’ve seen the power of long tail in our ecomm business, max conversion on terms that only provide 1 or 2 visits. Is there a guide on a how to really focus on getting the long tail?

By: Erik Holladay

Erik Holladay — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:29:34 +0000

Excellent article. Your data reinforces our long-standing approach to targeting long-tail organic and ppc search for quality b-to-b leads. This is great validation and helps us understand just how long the long-tail really is.

By: Catfish SEO

Catfish SEO — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:14:24 +0000

Great article. I am releasing a white paper soon about long tail search. I will let you know when it is available.

By: David Gregory

David Gregory — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:52:49 +0000

Good Call – further evidence to reinforce the principle of writing full and descriptive proper content and not trying to find perfect keyword densities.

By: Adrian Bold

Adrian Bold — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:27:30 +0000

Thank you Bill and Dustin for sharing this information. Hopefully some of it will hit home for those still going after the ‘golden goose’ single words…

By: MirrorBlue

MirrorBlue — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:00:17 +0000

Thanks for this very interesting data. It would be enlightening to see average numbers of searches in a given time period for the various segments, i.e. top 10 – x per month, top 1000 – y per month, top 100,000 – z per month and so forth.

By: Louise Gorrie

Louise Gorrie — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:32:19 +0000

Great post Dustin. I’m really surprised there’s not more research on the long tail. I can see it accounts for around 80% of my clients traffic, and that’s from aiming for the “primary keywords”. I think it’s important to note that out of the 80% at least 60% of it includes some variation of the “primary keywords”.

By: Rick O

Rick O — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:11:43 +0000

Hi Bill,
Here’s a thought, why do people search for Fortune Tellers around September?
http://google.com/trends?q=fortune+teller&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

By: Misty Lackie

Misty Lackie — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:42:38 +0000

Thank you so much for writing about this. I am a big believer in long-tail but it has been challenge convincing others on this. We have seen results first hand on our sites by focusing on long-tail searches.

By: dymphna boholt

dymphna boholt — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:37:05 +0000

After constant often neagtive vibes about chris’s book it really is great to see solid data to support the Power of the Long Tail

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:06:50 +0000

Great piece. Been waiting for someone to “get it” when it comes to the long tail of search. Chris Anderson wrote a brilliant book, but he underestimated the long tail when applying it to the search industry.

By: Ben McKay

Ben McKay — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:52:45 +0000

Really helpful long-tail stats, thanks for sharing!
It just goes to show that there’s still a lot of life in long-tail yet, even with search engine suggestion facilities creeping in….
Thanks Bill,
Ben M

By: Matt Williamson

Matt Williamson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:42:15 +0000

The truly interesting thing about this, is that there is so much information, and therefore data, on the Net to cross reference. Looking at these terms as a lattice-work of of human understanding, taking them in as a slice of what our collective consciousness is thinking at anyone time, there is much to be gained from that alone. I would love to see a heat map or tag cloud built around this data, moving in real-time.
Amazing.

By: J.D.

J.D. — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:35:14 +0000

Very interesting – I’ve gotten a taste for the tail @ much smaller scale @ a leading site in our industry. This confirms what I always have trouble explaining to my boss.
Forwarding this right now…