Now all of this may seem like an overwhelming amount of information to deal with.  So at this point you might be questioning the rationale behind the exhaustive and time consuming approach the Long Tail dictates for getting your site found by qualified buyers on Google.  So I’ll explain why this Long Tail approach with your Google Adwords ads is so important for getting great results for your business.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, people really don’t use search engines for browsing the web.  That isn’t what search engines are meant for.  Social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon help people browse the web because all items on these sites are categorized by people (not machines) and then sorted by preference according to people’s tastes.

A great example of a focused social bookmarking site is Rotten Tomatoes.  You could call Rotten Tomatoes Siskel & Ebert/Roeper on steroids.  Each movie in their large database is given a percentage (a ranking) and a single, short critical consensus statement, both based on the aggregate opinion of what critics have written about that movie.

For instance, the recent movie The Social Network about the rise of Facebook had a 97% rating out of 255 critic reviews with the following critical consensus statement: “Impeccably scripted, beautifully directed, and filled with fine performances, The Social Network is a riveting, ambitious example of modern filmmaking at its finest.”

Based on this kind of information for each movie you look up you can quickly form an opinion on what movies you want and don’t want to see.  Consequently, the site helps you get a clear sense of direction and purpose in what you’re looking for if you didn’t have one initially.  These types of sites are great at helping you decide exactly what you want.

Search engines’ basic purpose is two-fold: help people find exactly what they want and filter out everything else.  In other words, search engines are used for connecting people with what they’re looking for, not helping them discover and realize what they want to find.  People don’t just read everything search engines throw at them, attempting to absorb all of the information that has been discovered around the web.  Search engines are used when people want to find a specific piece of information.  More importantly, people use search engines to find the answer to a question.

The problems start when people use search engines for finding something when they don’t have a clear idea of what they want at the beginning.