Identifying 'the long tail'

As many of you may know, the BBC offers an interesting insight into the popularity of its content, via an interactive stats service where you can see which stories from its site are attracting the most clicks right now.

Predictably the current top 10 is predominantly made up of stories from the past two or three days  - canoe man, newfound mammal in the Gobi Desert... that sort of thing.

But the story attracting the most traffic right now is this one from April 2007: 'Man cuts off penis in restaurant' 

Last week, online editors from Channel 4 and the BBC told us at an event in the LMC (that's the LEWIS Media Centre) that the long tail sees many popular stories enjoy a lengthy shelf-life but this eight-month-old story is clearly still doing remarkable traffic.

From a PR perspective (as the restaurant in question may attest) getting a mention in such an evergreen 'bad penny' of a story certainly creates a new challenge.

The fact the events described took place eight months ago are no guarantee it won't keep popping up on blogs (ta-dah!) and being referenced elsewhere. Conversely if you can bag some positive coverage in a story which guarantees such perpetual coverage you might as well take the rest of the year off (OK, that probably wouldn't happen).