What is “Long-Tail”?
The “long tail” in search refers to the large number of queries or search terms that receive a relatively small number of searches individually, but when aggregated, they make up a significant portion of all searches.
For example, imagine an ecommerce platform using a search engine with 10 million different users. Some users can search for popular terms, like “books” or “chairs”, so these popular terms will receive millions of searches per month. However, there are many users that will be searching for more specific terms like “red tables” or “best sci-fi novels” and these specific terms will only receive a few searchers per month. When add up all these fewer common terms, we find that they make up a large portion of all searches, this is the “Long-Tail”.
Why is this important?
We should know about this because understanding the long tail, can allow search engines provide better results to users by matching their specific queries to the most relevant information, even if those queries are less common. When a user write fewer common terms means that he already has a clear purpose about it and he has a clear intention of purchase.
