So, three days ago, I told you about HitTail, which I thought would be a must-have seo tool. 3 days later - I still think that, and I'll explain why in more detail.
The tool looks at the search terms that people use to find your site. It then analyzes how deep in the SERPs those terms were. If someone gets to my site via a phrase they found on page one, great, but if they come to my site via a phrase that is found on page eight, for example, of the SERPs, then that's where this tool really kicks in. It highlights those types of terms, via the Suggestions tab, as potential keywords for you to focus on. After all, these are terms you are NOT ranking well for, but perhaps should be.
As for my particular case, there is one phrase (and variations of the phrase) that people are consistently using to reach my site, even though my site does not rank well for the phrase. People have really dug down deep into the SERPs before clicking on my listing. This phrase (and variations thereof of the phrase) appears in the SERPs on pages 4, 6, 7, 8, and 24. Yes, someone actually went to page 24 of the search engine listings. I assume they weren't happy with the results on the first 23 pages.
In any case, this is a phrase that people are obviously interested in, and obviously having a hard time finding relevant results. I should definitely work on getting better placement for this phrase. However, without this tool, I doubt I would have ever noticed the pattern. Sure, maybe I might have noticed it in the log files, but not likely.
If you try this tool, give it a few days before making a decision about it. It takes a while for enough data to stockpile before the Suggestions tab starts to fill up (or at least it does in some cases, depending upon your traffic).