Long Tail Getting Longer As Search Phrases Lengthen

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Long Tail Getting Longer As Search Phrases Lengthen

Hitwise has put out a very interesting study that I noticed on Search Engine Land today: search queries are getting longer. More words in the search box equals more long tail terms that are important to pay attention to.

1 to 2 word phrases have declined over the last year in the total number of searches, while longer searches have steadily increased. In fact, 8-word searches increased 22% over the last year with the cutoff point being at 3 word searches, which remained unchanged.

While there’s no doubt that the one and two-word “big fish” phrases hold tons of important SEO value, there is a lot of bulk in the long tail, and having a well-constructed site with plenty of relevant content can take advantage of this fact. It can be a lot of work, but with giant search queries becoming more common, ranking well for a three word root of some longer terms becomes highly advantageous.

One thing this implies is that users are having more confidence in the ability of search engines to find what they need in all aspects of life. How to searches are very popular and there is a lot of content up for these now. Also, search engines are increasingly being utilized to find specific local things, much of this coming from the mobile web.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 11:53 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.