we are just discussing how you could measure the long tail potential of online music stores like Musicload or itunes
Some of the search engines try to built algorythms for this but yet, I did not found any formula for this. But feel free to send me some ideas.
I should be something between context aware search and recommendations and previous data tagging and user rating. Laast.fm or better Musicovery.com already have recommendation systems with automatic generated playlists, not always perfect but a nice thing. especially if you do not want to choose the music on your own. You choose a category and listen. That is more the crowsourcing thing than a scientific approach.
Another page tries to offer a more scientific approach. this delivers Netconcept:
Long Tail Calculation
To recap, the formula to estimate both realized and unrealized search potential is as follows:
[ Pages(unique) x Keywords (per page) x Hits (per keyword) ] / Click-through rate
[ 73,000 pages x 2.4 KPP x 1.9 HPK ] / 4.7% CTR = 7,100,000 total searches
Simplifying this formula produces the following multiple:
[2.4 KPP x 1.9 HPK] / 4.7% CTR = 97
This suggests that, when calculated as a function of unique pages with roughly similar performance indicators, the potential unbranded search traffic for a large website can be estimated as roughly 100 times (over 97 times) the number of unique pages.
Furthermore, the calculated unbranded search potential (7.1 million searches) is roughly 38 orders of magnitude greater than the average site’s brand search universe of 189,000 searches.
Note: These calculations assume that the average client has 73,000 uniquelly crawled pages, 14% yielding traffic, and that 14% gets 4.6 keyword visitors per page with 189,000 brand searches per month.
CAPTURING LONG TAIL POTENTIAL
The call it the “Long Tail KPIs”
By associating non-brand keyword performance to producing pages, the Page Yield Theory offers a manageable framework for optimizing performance of the natural search long tail. This framework consists of the KPI’s used and calculated in this study, such as Yielding Pages, Keyword Yield per Page, and Keyword Hit Yield. These metrics provide a scientific assessment of large-scale optimization effectiveness, enabling merchants to more reliably guide optimization effort towards desired outcomes. “
… continue at http://www.netconcepts.com/long-tail-whitepaper/#Capture
Here are some other links of my recent research:
The Netflix prize offers money for anybody who improves the recommendation index of netflix( videoportal) about 10%
It started 2005, but yet, nobody received the 1.000.000,00$
http://www.netflixprize.com//rules
Other pages like the long tail of venture deals use it more for discussion than