Questions about the Long Tail
December 22nd, 2006
I posted a while back about the Meaty Middle, and why it was more important than the Long Tail for the application I’m involved with called RMX Direct. The reasoning is that for an advertising application, websites in the meaty middle or the top part of the Long Tail provide way more business than us than all the very small sites and blogs down the Long Tail.
Sure, we want small quality sites as well, but if we get a client that does 10 million ad impressions a day, that’s 10,000 small sites or blogs doing 1000 impressions a day. Even with a product that’s easy to support and an automated signup and sales process, the one larger client will not cause the same amount of work as 10,000 small ones.
Got Ads has a post pointing out that we’re not alone in this thinking, as he noticed with his ad network Texsy that the long tail blogs he was targeting basically had no traffic.
Does this mean the Long Tail concept is dead like he says? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I think the same reasons Amazon, iTunes, and other similar businesses have been able to prosper against their offline rivals is due to their ability to serve the Long Tail thanks to technology and the web. Although, I am quite curious to see data on what percentage of their sales are really attributed to the Long Tail, or if the Meaty Middle and the thick part of the curve are really providing the bulk of their business.
Fred Wilson theorized that the largest sites on the web were losing ground to the Long Tail, but Compete.com posts that their data shows the opposite to be true. Got Ads uses this as data against the Long Tail, but as the Compete blog says if you take out the rise of the two social networking giants then it’s basically a wash between 2001 and 2006. And, as one commenter said on the Got Ads post, some of the top 10 sites are really sites that aggregate the Long Tail or make it searchable.
I’d summarize by saying I’d disagree the Long Tail is totally dead, but that business models need to be wise about what they’re going after and whether that really should be the Long Tail, or if they should be moving up the curve.
Related Posts:
- More Meaty Middle
- Is Advertising and Aggregation the Key to the Long Tail?
- Long Tail? Or the Meaty Middle?
- Making Money With Online Advertising in The Long Tail
- Going to Web 2.0 Expo
Entry Filed under: Random
6 Comments Add your own
1. Cale Bruckner | December 22nd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
I agree with your summary point Pat. Businesses should think carefully before they build their business model around serving the long tail.
Very few companies today are really profiting from serving the long tail. Apple (iTunes) and Amazon are a couple that come to mind immediately of course but even in these highly visible cases it’s hard to tell just how much value they see in the tip of the tail and where their “meaty middles” are.
For a business to profit from serving the long tail they really have to get efficient at serving the customers out there in the margins and there aren’t many business that can afford to do that. Apple and Amazon have invested millions upon millions of dollars making it as efficient as possible to serve the long tail and it takes time to recover those costs. It took Amazon years in the red to start profiting from the long tail.
Don’t let the tail wag your dog!
2. Pat McCarthy | December 22nd, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Good point Cale, there is a large upfront investment by those companies that are able to profit from the Long Tail.
3. useAPI Search | December 23rd, 2006 at 8:25 am
Please, keep in mind that every search query has a “popular head” (as our shown) and not every query has long tail. If this is also applied to business. Every business should have a popular head. The long tail is just a byproduct of popular head and is very important in some. However, once should not concentrate on long tail and forget the popular head.
4. jeff | December 23rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
I just concentrate on the top 5%-10% – it’s worth the “meaty middles” and “long tails” combined. If it can’t scale don’t waste your efforts. IMHO.
5. Chris Nielsen | December 28th, 2006 at 10:08 am
We have been using what we call “General Optimzation” for over 8 years and it continues to be the most cost-effective form of SEO for small and medium business web sites. Our General Opitmization addresses and includes the idea of the long tail, but does not focus only on it.
Perhaps it’s not as effective for a large scale site, with the budget to target the highest volumn search phrases, but that’s just not realistic or effective for most small sites. Aside from the initial cost there is the ongoing cost to maintain those rankings. For small businesses it’s better to be able to optimize the site just once and just let it keep working. Sure, the traffic may not be as high, but you don’t have the continual expense either.
As far as a “large investment” for addressing the long tail, I don’t get it. Sure, you need more time to do the keyword research when you have thousands of keyword phrases and not just hundreds, and you have to spend more time working in those results into the optimization, but it’s not all THAT much more time.
General Optimiation/Long Tail is most certainly not dead or dying and until it shows some sign of being less effective we will keep using it.
6. Pat McCarthy | December 28th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comments. Sure, for targeting the long tail of search a large investment isn’t necessary. That comment was more based on companies like Amazon and Apple selling books and music to the long tail.
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