From Tim Keelan, Senior Account Manager at Hitwise:
Our savvy clients use Hitwise Search Intelligence to expand on their keyword lists using their competitors search term traffic. Each week they examine the long tail of searches and make sure every term is captured for SEM/SEO. Despite their best efforts, they must take for granted that search terms as they are typed in search engines make up only a portion of all searches that are important to a site.
Why is that? Well, for one, not everyone uses a search engine to get to a website. In fact, for the month of November, about 73% of retailer traffic came from non-search engine sources, including brand-loyal users who navigate directly to their favorite sites. On top of that, when they do come through search engines, many times they arrive by searching for branded terms. While knowing your competitor is getting branded traffic might be interesting, it doesn’t help you to expand on your keywords. To find what I call the second long tail of search, we need to look at internal search term traffic.
Hitwise’s Custom Internal Search Reports allow us to see the internal searches within a website. These searches are agnostic to the origin of the visitor. Using the data we are able to see the product search patterns of visitors, regardless of the source – branded external search, bookmarks, and e-mail to name just a few. Because so many visitors come in from brand searches and direct navigation, the internal search data is often broader and deeper than external search. Let’s take a look at Target.com.
Target.com Search Term Breakout
When looking at Target.com’s internal search data I’m first struck by not only the depth of the data, but also the fact that few of the terms are shared with external paid and organic search (only 979 terms). Here we are seeing the true long tail of search terms in the internal data. In the internal search list, there are barely any Target related searches, just products that people want to find and buy.

The differences between the product choices of internal vs. external are also stark. Below you’ll find the top 10 internal product searches for the week ending November 28th and in parenthesis where those terms rank in the external search list.
Top 10 Internal Product Searches (External Search Rank)
1. Wii (116)
2. zhu zhu (No External Search Traffic)
3. cartoons network games (12)
4. ipod touch (15)
5. ipod (34)
6. psp (1822)
7. math games for kids (1444)
8. wii games (228)
9. tv (No External Search Traffic)
10. brain fun (13221)
While the iPod touch may be important driver of external search, Target.com visitors are more interested in Wii consoles and games. Oh and the lovely “Zhu Zhu” is the #2 internal search but doesn’t appear in that form externally (“Zhu Zhu Pets” does drive substantial external traffic though).
You can read a lot into the contrast between the two types of searches. Did a circular promotion drive internal searches for “Brain Fun”? Was the term “Zhu Zhu” too expensive for Target to bid on? Should Target.com be featuring Wii since it’s obvious that’s what many of their visitors are looking for? All these are important questions, but the value of this data is clear – you now have 17,770 terms you didn’t know were important to your competitor. Ask your account manager about how you can get these reports on your own competitors.
Lastly, do you know which Target.com internal search term was more popular than Wii in the first week of November? “Target Job Application”. I expect that term to return to the top of the list as soon as everyone gets their holiday credit card bills.