the long tail

Checking my stats today it hit me that my forum has a really long tail.

15% of Google search referrals for the month so far come from 3 keyphrases (the main ones I directed my seo efforts to attain). The rest of the referrals are spread out over different random phrases. The ratio of unique search phrases / total searches is roughly 68%.

How large a shadow is your long tail casting?

We get traffic from over 18,000 different search phrases.

That's awesome, but I was hoping to hear about the ratio of unique phrases to total search volume as that metric tends to mitigate differences in forum size, link profile, etc. It's more useful for comparisons I think.

Our top 3 search phrases account for 10.8% of our search traffic.

Since I disclosed our # of unique search phrases, I cannot disclose the ratio. Our traffic volume is a confidential metric.

My ratio of unique search phrases / total searches :


in 2007 (mid oct - dec) : 85.25 %
Share of Top 3 phrases : 6.86 %


2008 (jan - mid march) : 85.92 %
Share of Top 3 phrases : 7.54 %

No problem Joe. I'm sure this site is doing quite well.

Shadab, that's a huge tail! Are your top 3 phrases #1 SERPs? They are in my case.

Nope. None of them were/are #1. (their position varies on 1st page though).

top 1st keyphrase : Was in top 5 results. now since last 2-3 days i can't find myself in top 100. :(
(not to worry, it wasn't any of my targeted keywords/phrases)

top 2nd keyphrase : Position varies on 1st page from 3rd to 8th.
(today it is on 8th)

top 3rd keyphrase : Page #1, Consistent position 3.

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