Via the wonderful Hitwise comes news that the head of the long tail, the most popular search terms, is getting larger.
over the last two years there has been a consolidation of the most popular terms. For example, for the 4 weeks ending in the middle of October 2005, 5% of all search volume consisted of 49 terms, but for the same period this year (2007), that number deceased to just 9 terms.
The reason is apparently down to navigational search which has seen a 30% increase in the UK since 2005. More people are searching for a small number of sites such as “ebay” and “amazon” than ever before.
The good news for search marketers targeting non branded search terms is that people are using a much broader array of search terms for their non navigational queries meaning it is easier to rank for high traffic terms.
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