Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Using the Long Tail for Keyword Optimization
the term “long tail” was originally coined by
Wired
's Chris anderson. the long tail
is derived from traditional power laws and refers to the distribution of data in general.
But in Chris's terminology, as i read it, the long tail describes a business strategy.
Power Law
A power law is a mathematical relationship between two quantities. If one quantity is the fre-
quency of an event, the relationship is a power law distribution, and the frequencies decrease
very slowly as the size of the event increases, thus generating a distribution with a clear head
and, more importantly, the long tail.
the long tail describes the niche strategy of businesses such as amazon or apple
itunes that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities. it is
easier to adopt on the internet than any other channel. Figure 13.1 shows the general
shape of the long tail graph.
the long tail can also refer to the demographic group that purchases a large
number of what we could call “non-hit” items. Given a large enough availability of
choice, a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs,
the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution
curve. this suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain
degree of inequality by favoring the upper part of the items, hits, over the other items,
the long tail.
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Figure 13.1
Traditional long tail graph
