Long-Tail Searches Increasing – Good News for Niche Web Sites

8-Word Search Queries Up 34,000% in Last 5 Years!
by Andy Beal
Marketing Pilgrim

Dave’s Comments (Digital Marketing Tutorial Blog): A great article by Andy Beal. He combines stats on percent of search engine searches containing 1, 2, 3… up to 8 key words from 2004 with same data from Hitwise, but 5 years later! The trend info is very good news for small business Web sites providing niche products, services and/or serving specific geographical locations. More and more searchers are using more and more words in their search phrases (“long-tail” searches) to pinpoint the exact product/service they’re looking for. And this trend is good news for those sites trying to be found by those specific Customers! The Internet Marketing lesson for small businesses – don’t worry about being found for 1 and 2 word search phrases – instead work 3, 4, 5-plus keyword phrases into your Web site content to help potential Customers find you. It’s easier, more natural, and it works!

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, we might want to start scanning-in images of what we’re trying to find on the search engines. As new data from Hitwise suggests, we’re gradually starting to use more & more keywords when conducting our search engine queries.

Hitwise compared January 2009’s data with last year’s, but I want to take you back farther in time–5 years in fact! Not that my memory goes back that far, but I did remember covering this data for my old blog: Search Engine Lowdown.

Here are the numbers from this year, with Feb 2004’s numbers in parentheses:”

Read the entire article on MarketingPilgrim.com