---
title: Long tail of software
date: "2005-03-14T12:00:00Z"
categories:
  - links
wp_id: 714
description: Explore how search engines derive power and profit from the long tail. While top queries are popular, 97% of traffic often comes from niche, low-frequency searches, illustrating the significant economic value found in the distribution's tail.
keywords: [long tail, search engines, chris anderson, niche markets, data distribution, economic models]
---

[The long tail of software](http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2005/03/the_long_tail_o.html).

> The most interesting statistic however, was that while the top 10 searches were thousands of times more popular than the average search, these top-10 searches represented only 3% of our total volume. 97% of our traffic came from the long tail: queries asked a little over once a day.
>
> Search is a long tail business and that is the source of its power and profit. Read [Chris Anderson's Wired article](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html)

---

## Comments

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- **Arun** _17 Mar 2005 8:44 am_:
  Excellent Articles
- **S Anand** _17 Mar 2005 9:33 am_:
  Jason has another interesting post on [the long tail of paypal](http://www.kottke.org/05/03/long-tail-paypal)
- **S Anand** _17 Mar 2005 10:11 am_:
  Chris Anderson has a [website about the long tail](http://longtail.typepad.com/about.html)

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