This article provides a simple formula and a practical methodology for analyzing long tails. The same model can be applied to topics as diverse as books, search phrases, size of companies, and geographical distribution of populations. This article makes it possible for anyone to utilize the long tail concept not only as a general idea, but also as a tool to make realistic and useful analyses of real phenomena.

This paper analyzes which pages and topics are the most popular on Wikipedia and why. For the period of September 2006 to January 2007, the 100 most visited Wikipedia pages in a month are identified and categorized in terms of the major topics of interest. The observed topics are compared with search behavior on the Web. Search queries, which are identical to the titles of the most popular Wikipedia pages, are submitted to major search engines and the positions of popular Wikipedia pages in the top 10 search results are determined. The presented data helps to explain how search engines, and Google in particular, fuel the growth and shape what is popular on Wikipedia.