Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
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July 19, 2006
Pirates of the Caribbean - The Long Tail of Search
On Sunday evening I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean at my local cinema. My decision to go to a movie was driven by a need to escape the heat and my choice of film was based on Hitwise Search Intelligence data and my regret at having missed the first in the Pirates of the Caribbean series -- which was apparently quite a fun film.
The movie was really bad and really long. If I hadn't been sitting in the middle of the row, I would have left halfway through - that's how bad it was! But "pirates of the caribbean" was the most searched for movie in the UK last week, and has been for three weeks. It eclipses searches for "superman", "superman returns", "spiderman 3", and "over the hedge". Two weeks ago I saw Thank You For Smoking - a film I really enjoyed. Why is this film not among the most searched for in the UK? Enter the long tail.
Chris Anderson wrote an article in Wired Magazine in October of 2004 titled The Long Tail. The article's subheading summarises the concept nicely "Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream." Chris has expanded his article into a book which is available for pre-order in the UK.
Pirates of the Caribbean offers not just a chance for me to rant about the the folly of crowds but also provides an excellent example of the "long tail" of search. The following chart shows the top 5000 search terms (among the 67,501) sending UK visits to Movies - Entertainment sites in the past four weeks. The Y axis represents the share of UK visits from each term and the X axis plots each of the 5,000 search queries.
The top 32 terms are so-called "head terms". These terms are the high volume terms and together make up 14.24% of visits from search to Movies sites in the past four weeks. Head terms in this example include the movies listed above along with a few other blockbusters and brand terms such as "odeon", "imdb", "vue cinema" and "showcase cinema". These terms are all associated with huge offline spend, which is a huge factor in influencing online search behaviour. The tail terms are those terms whose volume is so low that when charted they appear almost flat against the x-axis. There were over 67,000 terms with less than .02% share in the past four weeks, more than 4,700 of which are plotted on the above chart. These tail terms include "yu-gi-oh the movie", "rise of the footsoldier" and "thank you for not smoking". Again, these terms have enjoyed far less offline promotion and that has translated to fewer online searches.
Whilst the wisdom of crowds may have lead me to see crummy blockbusters at the weekend, the internet has opened opportunities for consumers and retailers alike. Blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean are the head followed by a very long tail. Hitwise captured 67,501 unique search terms sending UK internet users to Entertainment - Movies websites last week. The chart above charts the top 5,000. The head terms only accounted for about 32 terms and a 14% share of visits. The opportunities for consumers to participate in niche areas of interest are huge and the opportunities for retailers to benefit from these niche interests online (where the limits of shelf-space don't place a big role) are tremendous.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 11:11 AM
Posted to Search
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Comments
i liked the move it was great
Posted by: Anonymous at November 18, 2006 03:13 AM
