February 3, 2010 – Here are the numbers from one of my clients, which offers a perfect mathematical illustration of how important the long-tail search is.

-Google sent 10,491 visits via 2,405 keywords
-Top 20 keywords accounted for 4,956 visits
-Brand searches are number one at 2,555 visits

The 4,956 visits from the top 20 keywords represents 47% of the traffic and the next 53% of traffic is represented by 2,385 keywords – so the long-tail accounts for 53% of the total traffic or 5,535 visits

If we take the brand name out of this equation then:

7,936 visits from 2,404 keywords with the top 20 equaling 2,464 of those visits representing 31% of the total visits, the other 2,385 keywords represents 69% of the search traffic from Google.

So realistically speaking the head (main search terms) accounted for 31% of total Google search traffic and the tail (long-tail terms) accounted for 69% of the total Google search traffic.  And my educated guess is that the long-tail (69% of searches) converted at a rate of two to three times higher than the main keyword terms.

The conclusion is that long-tail search can have a major effect on the bottom line of any company that derives clients, leads or sales from their website.