Anyone who works with me learns very quickly that I am a coffee addict. I can go for hours without a cigarette, but if I can’t get decent coffee I get quite upset.
While discussing how much people were paying for clicks recently a new service, HitTail, was mentioned by one of the regulars.
So, as my curiosity was piqued I signed up for an account last night. Then another. And another. And another. Anyone notice a pattern emerging? 🙂
So what is Hit Tail?
According to themselves:
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.
They forgot to mention that it’s highly addictive!
Signing up for an account only takes a couple of seconds, after which you are presented with the single line of Javascript you need to add to your site. You need to make sure that it loads on every single page view, so if you’re using a template system of some kind adding it to the footer would make sense.
Once logged in you are presented with the following screen:
Over time each section is populated with the search queries so that you can easily see what is driving traffic to your site.
What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t bore you with unnecessary details.
You get keywords / phrases and you can easily see which search engines are driving them to your site.
Forget about all the other details. If you want those look at something else.
The documentation on their site explains this very clearly!
This is an area that so many other log analysis services / software fall down on.
Instead of using plain English they get caught up in confusing jargon.
If I wanted to read jargon without actually learning how something worked I’d read “man” pages from the command line – thanks!
So what can I say about Hit Tail…
On the plus side:
It’s really cool! Though it’s so damned addictive that I can easily while away several hours just exploring what weird queries people are using to end up on sites I manage.
So far I’ve learnt that people are arriving on this site while searching for some really obscure things, while others were looking for more mainstream topics that I hadn’t realised that I ranked well for.
On the negative side:
The UI isn’t that great. It’s functional, but some of the colours contrast badly rendering some sections almost impossible to view. A prime example of this is the delete button:
Light pink on a yellow background?
Was the designer on crack?
Was there even a designer?
The other thing that is maddening is that you have to signup for a new account for each site you want to track.
While a single account may suit someone with only one site this tool is not really aimed at them.
It’s going to prove a lot more useful / popular with online marketers who manage multiple sites and campaigns.
And we all have enough usernames and passwords to remember already, thank you very much!
Most of the issues related to the UI could be fixed quite easily. There are plenty of very talented people out there who would be able to help them get it “right”, because it’s the kind of thing that can make the difference between a success and a failure.
Although the service is currently in “beta” (maybe as a fashion statement, who knows?) it seems to work well and there is some mention of a premium service. If the pricing on the premium service isn’t crazy I’d probably pay for it, though I’d have to actually act on its suggestions etc., for that to be worth my while.
I have been using it since I mentioned it in the forum. It’s really great. I will gladly pay to upgrade the account when they sort out having multiple accounts.
Don’t they WANT agencies to use this tool?
Only other problem is that it does not differentiate between paid and organic “hits”
Dave
So your adwords hits are also counted? I thought they weren’t
M
Yup. Unfortunately. And try sending feedback to them. It shouldn’t be that hard.
It has a long way to go.
Dave
Do they listen to the feedback?
Michele
I gave up. It redirected me to their main page, then required me fill in information that was completely irrelevant.
A company should make feedback easy. A simple “Suggest a feature” would do them the world of good.
Michele
Any reason why you blanked the stats? I signed up for this when it was some time last year, but felt it hard to justify sticking multiple JS tracking codes on sites.
Want to give some idea of what benefits you found that wouldn’t be available from something like GA?
Do we listen to feedback? I read this post before any comments were posted. I actually waited until this morning until some comments accumulated, so as to keep things objective and unbiased.
OK, now to bias. We listen to feedback throughout the web. You don’t even need to contact us directly. But if you do, you can use the forum or the feedback form. Both work great, and we have lots of fans who will tell you we’ve directly implemented features upon your request.
Now, onto the graphics. Yep, I concede on every point. The pink-on-yellow only occurs on the highlighted line. I try to steer away from all things graphics, until we hire a top-notch designer to do an overhaul. This stuff is terribly subjective, and one person’s “perfect” is another person’s “unacceptable”. All I can say is give it a try.
On the note of putting multiple JavaScripts, we are the best second JavaScript to use, because our whole system “goes quiet” after the initial referrer hit. We have perhaps the most polite and least chatty tracking code in the industry.
Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming!
Richard
I always blank out numbers 🙂
If the numbers were low I’d get hassle – if they were high I’d get hassle! So I blanked them out completely for the purposes of this exercise – it keeps you all guessing!
M
Oh yeah, on the multiple accounts front, just use the same email address for each account you sign up, then log in with your email address as the username. You will be able to easily switch between websites.
Mike
I tried logging in with my email address but it got very upset 🙁
Michele
Try using an email address that you used for multiple accounts, then the password from one of the accounts. Email hittail at connors dot com for personal follow-up and help. Thanks.
Mike
Woohoo! That worked!
Thanks
Michele
Might give this a bash now. Good of Mike to drop by and answer all the questions.
Michele you could at least have left us the percentages. We’d still be none the wiser you know 🙂
Richard
Mike seems to be quite pro-active !
Regarding the perecentages – they are just distracting. They’ve probably changed a bit since I took the screenshot, but if you _really_ want them I could provide them *sigh* 🙂
M
The percentages are meaningless during the early days. First, because there are so few keywords collected, there’s like a 50/50 split between your top-10 keywords and everything else. After that, it creeps ever closer to an 20/80 split. A few lucky folks edge towards a 10/90 split, but those tend to be HUGE sites with tens of thousands of collected keywords.
Mike
On this site I’m seeing 17.9% vs 82.1% long tail (after about 3 days)
On IWF it’s 15% vs 85%, while on a much quieter site there aren’t enough stats to draw any conclusions
Michele