The phrase The Long Tail was invented by Chris Anderson in an Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. As an example, Amazon makes 57% of sales from keywords outside of the popular terms. This article lead to a book named “The Long Tail” which was released in a new version this week, with a new cover and a lower price.
The Long Tail is the phenomenon that the sum of less frequent searches is greater than the sum of the top searches. The tail are the niche products, individually unimportant, but collectively significant.
