If you did SEO or built niche sites in the 2010s, you probably remember Long Tail Pro. For a while there, it was the keyword research tool. It found the low-competition, long-tail keywords that small sites could actually rank for, and a whole generation of bloggers built their businesses on it.
So when I went to check the tool recently and found the website dead, I wanted to know what actually happened. The short version? A tool that once earned close to a million dollars a year was sold, resold, and eventually mismanaged into the ground. The longer version is a genuinely useful cautionary tale, and its founder has been surprisingly open about the whole thing.
Here’s the full story of what happened to Long Tail Pro, plus the keyword tools I’d point you to now that it’s gone.
What Was Long Tail Pro?
Long Tail Pro was a keyword research tool built by Spencer Haws, the founder of Niche Pursuits. Back in 2010, Spencer was a business banker at Wells Fargo who happened to be building dozens of niche websites on the side. The problem he kept running into: existing tools like Market Samurai only let you research one seed keyword at a time.
He wanted something faster. Specifically, a tool where he could drop in 10, 20, or 30 seed keywords across different niches and have it spit out thousands of keyword ideas at once, complete with the metrics he needed to decide whether a keyword was worth targeting. When he couldn’t find one, he hired a developer and had it built himself.
Once it matured, a few things set it apart:
- Bulk long-tail keyword research. Feed it multiple seed keywords and it returned hundreds of low-competition, long-tail suggestions with search volume attached.
- A keyword competitiveness score. Its signature “Long Tail Platinum” feature scored how hard a keyword would be to rank for, so you weren’t guessing.
- SERP metrics for every result. It pulled the SEO metrics of the pages already ranking, so you could judge whether you had a real shot.
- Rank tracking. You could track the keywords you’d targeted and watch your positions over time.
If that sounds a lot like the workflow behind modern keyword research tools, that’s because Long Tail Pro helped popularize it. It was ahead of its time when it launched.
The Rise: From Side Project to Seven Figures
The first version launched to Spencer’s small email list (around 1,500 people) at the tail end of 2010, plus a Warrior Forum special offer. It made about $2,500 in its first month. Not life-changing, but enough to prove people wanted it.
Then came a rough patch that nearly killed the tool before it got going. The original developer went quiet, and when Spencer asked for the source code, he was told he didn’t actually own it, and buying it would cost another $15,000. He had a real decision to make: pay up, shut down, or rebuild from scratch. He chose to rebuild, spent about six months on a second version, handed refunds and free upgrades to early customers, and relaunched.
That’s when it took off. It started as a one-time desktop purchase (around $47, later $97), then Spencer introduced a recurring subscription for the keyword competitiveness feature. A series of big affiliate launches, run with marketer Mark Thompson, poured fuel on the fire: roughly $250,000 in sales over about ten days in 2013, and around $500,000 from a single launch in 2015.
By 2015, Long Tail Pro was doing just under $1 million in revenue with more than $600,000 in profit, and Spencer owned 100% of it. By 2016 he was netting over $50,000 a month. For a tool that started as a way to scratch his own itch, that’s a remarkable run.
What Happened to Long Tail Pro?
This is where the story turns. Long Tail Pro didn’t die because the product was bad or because nobody wanted keyword tools anymore. It died because it changed hands one too many times and landed with an owner who let it rot. Spencer has told this story himself in two videos on the Niche Pursuits channel, and the timeline goes like this.
The First Sale to Wired Investors (2016)
By 2016, competitors were multiplying, Google was tightening access to its keyword data, and Long Tail Pro was still a desktop application in a world moving online. Spencer decided he’d rather sell than take on the huge investment of rebuilding it as a web app.
He sold to a small private equity group called Wired Investors for $1.8 million. He actually kept a 20% stake because he still believed in the upside. And for about a year, that faith looked justified. Wired Investors did the hard work of moving Long Tail Pro from desktop to an online tool and shipped a bunch of new features.
The Second Sale and the Beginning of the End (2018)
Then Wired Investors got overextended. According to Spencer, they acquired more than 20 companies in about two years, then decided to liquidate everything and dissolve the business. At the end of 2018, they sold Long Tail Pro again, this time to a new owner. That’s when things really started going downhill.
The new owner’s whole plan was to acquire a bunch of businesses and take the group public. The trouble, in Spencer’s telling, is that he seemed far more excited about going public than about actually running any of the tools he’d bought. The leadership team was bloated with management layers that managed nothing, and nobody was ever really put in charge of growing or even maintaining Long Tail Pro.
Death by Mismanagement
Within 12 months of that second sale, it was obvious the new owner didn’t know how to run the business. Spencer, who still owned a sliver of the company, hopped on multiple consulting calls to spell out exactly what he’d do to grow it. His advice was never followed. Long Tail Pro was, in his words, left on a deserted island while the owner hoped it would somehow rescue itself.
Sales slid. Support went dark. Customers who reached out to the Long Tail Pro help desk got no response, and some of them started emailing Spencer directly, even though he hadn’t run the company in years. The financial side unraveled too. Wired Investors had sold with seller financing, meaning they were still owed multiple six figures, and the new owner couldn’t make the payments because every business he’d acquired was failing at the same time.
By the time Spencer published his “They Just Killed My $1.8 Million Startup” video in mid-2024, the Long Tail Pro website had been down for over two months. From what he understood, the owner could no longer afford the hosting bill and owed money to multiple people, now including the hosting company. Attorneys were involved and legal proceedings were underway.
Where Things Stand Now
As of this writing, Long Tail Pro is effectively gone. Visit longtailpro.com today and you won’t find a keyword tool at all. The domain now points to a completely unrelated business, and the old product pages return errors. There’s no working signup, no support, and no sign anyone is reviving it.
Spencer’s own verdict is blunt: Long Tail Pro died through mismanagement. Someone spent seven figures on a healthy, profitable software company and then let it die a slow, painful death. If you’re a former customer wondering why your tool stopped working, that’s your answer. It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t the product.
The Lesson Hiding in Long Tail Pro’s Story
There’s something worth sitting with here, especially if you rely on software to run your business. A tool can be profitable, well-loved, and genuinely useful, and still disappear because of decisions made in a boardroom you’ll never see. The people who felt it first were the customers, who lost access with no warning and nowhere to turn.
The practical takeaway: don’t build your entire workflow around a single tool, and keep your keyword data exportable. If a tool is central to how you work, it’s worth knowing you could switch without losing everything. Which brings me to what you should actually use now.
The Best Long Tail Pro Alternatives Still Going Strong
Here’s the part that stings. While Long Tail Pro was being neglected, the market for affordable keyword tools kept thriving. Plenty of small, well-run tools do what Long Tail Pro used to do, and several of them do it better. These are the ones I’d recommend. (A quick note: some of the links below are affiliate links, so I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I’d actually use.)
LowFruits
If you want the closest spiritual successor to Long Tail Pro, start here. LowFruits is built specifically to find low-competition, long-tail keywords that smaller sites can rank for, which is exactly the job Long Tail Pro was famous for. It analyzes the SERP and flags weak spots (like forums and low-authority pages ranking on page one) so you know where you’ve got a real opening. Notably, Spencer himself named LowFruits as one of the small keyword tools doing well today.
KWFinder by Mangools
KWFinder is probably the most direct like-for-like replacement. It’s beginner-friendly, affordable, and laser-focused on long-tail keywords with a clear difficulty score, which is the feature most Long Tail Pro users cared about. It comes bundled with the rest of the Mangools suite (SERPWatcher for rank tracking, SERPChecker for SERP analysis), so you get a lot of the old Long Tail Pro workflow in one place.
Serpstat
Ready to move up to a full SEO platform without enterprise pricing? Serpstat is my pick. It handles keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audits in one dashboard. It’s the tool my own content writing campaigns lean on, and it scales well as your needs grow.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is another excellent all-in-one option that’s still very affordable. Its keyword research database is deep, its rank tracker is one of the best in its price range, and it’s a genuinely comfortable step up if you’ve outgrown a single-purpose keyword tool.
Semrush
When you’re ready for the industry heavyweight, Semrush is the standard. It’s more than a keyword tool, it’s a complete SEO and marketing suite. It’s overkill if all you want is long-tail keywords, but if you’re doing this professionally or for clients, it’s hard to beat the depth of its data.
Keyword Revealer
Rounding out the list, Keyword Revealer is a budget-friendly tool built around finding profitable, low-competition keywords. I use it for its bulk keyword checker, especially for pulling questions out of the “People Also Ask” boxes to build out FAQ sections. It has the same low-competition-hunting DNA that made Long Tail Pro popular.
Worth mentioning too: Spencer specifically praised KeySearch and Keyword Chef as small, well-run tools thriving in the space Long Tail Pro left behind. I don’t use those two personally, but they’re proof the category is alive and well.
Not sure how to actually put any of these to work? My guide on how to do keyword research for SEO walks through the whole process, and if you want to understand the type of keywords Long Tail Pro specialized in, start with my primer on long-tail keywords.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Long Tail Pro still available in 2026?
No. The Long Tail Pro website is down and the domain no longer hosts the tool. There’s no working signup or support, so for all practical purposes the tool is defunct.
What happened to Long Tail Pro?
Founder Spencer Haws sold it to Wired Investors in 2016 for $1.8 million. Wired later sold it again at the end of 2018 to a new owner who mismanaged it, defaulted on the seller financing, and eventually couldn’t even keep the website’s hosting paid. By 2024 the site was down and legal proceedings were underway.
How much did Long Tail Pro sell for?
Spencer Haws sold Long Tail Pro to Wired Investors in 2016 for $1.8 million, keeping a small ownership stake at the time.
What is the best Long Tail Pro alternative?
For long-tail keyword hunting specifically, LowFruits and KWFinder are the closest replacements. If you want a full SEO platform, Serpstat and SE Ranking are excellent affordable options, and Semrush is the top choice for professionals who need the deepest data.
Can I get a refund or recover my Long Tail Pro subscription?
Unfortunately, there’s no active support to reach. Since the business appears to be insolvent and in legal proceedings, the realistic move is to cancel any recurring charge through your bank or card provider and migrate to one of the alternatives above.
Final Thoughts
Long Tail Pro deserved a better ending. It was a great tool built by someone who cared, and it helped a lot of people (myself included) learn how to find keywords worth chasing. Its downfall had nothing to do with the software and everything to do with who ended up holding it.
The good news is that the job Long Tail Pro did so well is now handled by tools that are cheaper, better, and actively maintained. If you’ve been hanging on to Long Tail Pro out of loyalty or habit, it’s time to move on. Pick one of the alternatives above, and if you want help putting it to work, my SEO content writing guide will show you how to turn those keywords into content that ranks.