Google changed the way that customers search in online shops: today, about 70 per cent of customers using site search type in what are known as long tail requests. In contrast to generic search queries like “shoe”, long tail queries are combinations of single search words (e.g. “red Nike men’s shoe”) and communicate a very specific intent to buy.

Complex queries are not only those that are most likely to lead to a conversion: in many cases, they also attract customers to high-margin niche products.

Consequently, as a merchant you benefit twice, if your customers get relevant results in response to their complex queries. Often, though,  that is exactly the problem: most online shops have a hard time recognising all the possible combinations of word components and all imaginable misspellings without long, manually composed word lists.

You could manually teach 10 or even 1,000 long tail keywords to your search tool, but the effort becomes impossible with 100,000 keywords. So, in order to realise the sales potential of long tail queries, you should use a site search tool that handles complex queries automatically.long tail infographic