Any serious blogger doesn’t just blog for the sake of blogging nor does a website exists just for kicks. You have an audience in mind but the elusive question is how do you target them? It’s not enough just to track your hits; you need essential tools to give you a clear picture of how your site is fairing in the wilderness that is the Internet.

Keyword search and tracking for “organic searches” can reveal untapped marketing potential for your site, which is why, despite it’s poor interface design, we warm-heartedly recommend HitTail.

We’ve been using HitTail now for about 3 months and have uncovered some interesting facts about our blog as a result:

• Despite the popular myth, stupid people do find their way onto the internet:
  “When is the April 20th Millionaire Raffle”
  I dunno you tell me! It can’t be April 20th can it? Nah.
• Apparently 5000 is Millionster’s lucky number:
  35% of all our organic searches include the number 5000.
  Including some broke folks: “I need 5000 dollars”
• People obsessed with their weight find their way to Millionster
  “anorexia glamorized”, “being fat”, “fat gurls”, “fit people”
• and of course one of my favorite search queries to date:
  “desperate for money will do anything”

All of which we could not have easily discovered without the service provided by HitTail.

Millionster reviews HitTail Real-time Search Keyword Tracking.

PROFILE: HitTail
COMPANY: Connors Communication Inc.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site. It’s that simple. Of course, HitTail is built with sophisticated algorithms and patent-pending technology that took our Chief HitTailer a while to develop.”

DESIGN/MARKETING: 2 of 5
I’ll try not to be too critical here despite my propensity to be the Simon of the web design world. Not everyone is a professional designer, but being as a company’s site is their ambassador to the connected universe I am largely disappointed by Hittail’s unclear interface design and poor attempt at a Web-two-point-oh-ing. Good thing the interface doesn’t speak entirely for the service itself. Still poor design leads me to question a website’s reliability as a resource or a utility. To make matters worse, I don’t think that the YouTube video clip Demo, created in PowerPoint and voiced over by the super geeks is of any marketing use either, but maybe I’m just being cynical. So yes, we’re off to a poor start.

EASE OF USE: 3 of 5
To begin you simply click the Register link and create your account like you would any other web service. (Again the page designs here need some serious loving) You confirm and the turnover time from register to account is quick. Under My Account you’ll find the javascript snippet you’ll need to get Hittail to work on your site. Just copy and paste. After about 24 hours or so, HitTail will track your site’s traffic, filter, and analyze all of your organic search results. Nice.

Once you get past this step though you might start to notice that the navigation isn’t very clear and seems to degrade ungracefully on Firefox 2+ browsers. The labels on the navigation tab don’t clearly communicate what each one does, and if you want to go and get to a help or FAQ to figure it out good luck finding the link for it. You’ll get an oddly obscure “help” link in the middle of your page.

It might take a couple of times of actually using HitTails to get a grasp of what is going on here. Doh! We were doing so good. Still anything you need to know is a click away, and once you get used to the awkward navigation HitTails works like a charm. (Though some people might get scared away before they discover this)

RELIABILITY: 4 of 5
So far HitTail has had negligible drag on the page loads (unlike MyBlogLog and SiteMeter doh!); even as a Beta service, HitTail performs strongly and the data gathered seems consistent with other similar service that track hits. Though from a business stand point I can’t vouch for the long-term reliability of this service. I wonder how widespread the use of HitTail is projected to be; if enough people don’t buy into their Premium Service, will it last as long as Yahoo? Probably not. (Remember Performancing’s free stat service? Now they’re a blog giving advice.) I should also mention that the engineer in me is screaming that there’s something wrong with having only a single developer creating the incredibly “complex algorithms”. So my bet would be to not put all your eggs in one basket just yet; still, getting some mileage out of HitTail while it’s available is worthwhile! It works and it’s online, it gets a 4!

USEFULNESS: 4 of 5
To get a grasp for the innate usefulness of this service this excerpt about their concept of LongTailing and how it can “eventually free you from paid keyword campaigns” is rather insightful:

The long tail is an economic concept that says the collective demand for less-popular items (in green) can exceed the all the most popular added together (in red). Online music stores are a perfect example because they can carry large collections of music just as easily as just a small selection. The product is digital and there are no inventory issues. So, the pay-per-click industry is now using this concept to encourage you to run ever-larger keyword buys. Their inventory of obscure, yet valuable keywords is inexhaustible. But the dirty secret of keyword marketing is that the longtail concept applies even better to un-paid search, and can eventually free you from your paid keyword campaigns.

A very interesting concept indeed. Though I’d have to admit I’ve not taken the service to this level of market analysis, I think it’s just cool to know what search keywords bring people to Millionster.

Still, I’m a skeptic. The information is useful, but HitTail could definitely make some moves to improve on the service. Overall I’m pleased by the information analysis provided by HitTail.

OVERALL: 3 of 5
The short and skinny is this service is backed up by the excellent concept of Long Tailing your organic search hits, but the business model, substellar design make me question how long this service is going to be around for. The Premium service doesn’t add enough value to justify paying $5 a month for it, so try out the Free Beta Version, and I’m sure once you get used to it, you’ll love it.

Have you used HitTail before? Did you just sign up with them as a result of this article? Did you learn anything interesting about organic search results? Please share with us in the comment section below.

Always, your friend in finance,
Juan Millon (1mil)