> The fact MasterClass ranks first in Google for "what is a shallot?" is pretty surprising.

No more surprising than this MasterClass ad from the nytimes. We know companies hire PR firms to get their products in articles/ads in newspapers and favorable "SEO" rankings.

How many people who don't know what a shallot is are going to drop $80 or whatever on a Gordon Ramsay masterclass?

If you're Googling "what is a shallot," it means you don't know much about cooking and are trying to learn more. Seems like the perfect target market for an online cooking class.

I agree with GP though, if you don't know what a shallot is, it's not likely you have sufficient interest to pay money to learn about cooking.

Obviously it's regional, but from my UK perspective shallots are not exotic.

I'm not aware that they even suffer from multiple names as do spring/salad/green onions/scallions. Echalions of course, but that's a subcategory.

If shallots are unfamiliar, again, UK, you've spent little time even in supermarket vegetable aisles or restaurants and, surely, are therefore unlikely to actually part with cash a cooking class?

Pretty sure this is what search analytics is for... and it’s not about whether a particular phrase is the best signal, but the cheapest signal.

Absolutely not. I am willing to bet that 90%+ of queries are about the confusion between a shallot and an onion. Nothing to do with the desire to learn how to cook.

> I am willing to bet that 90%+ of queries are about the confusion between a shallot and an onion.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. Shallots can also be confused with scallops. (They're not similar things, but they are similar names.)

> If you're Googling "what is a shallot," it means you don't know much about cooking and are trying to learn more.

I think it's more likely that it means you're trying to read a menu, really.

If that's the case, start with his free stuff on YouTube.

Seems like there's two possible answers where this makes perfect sense:

- maybe many people who don't know what a shallot is would drop $80 for a Ramsay masterclass (kind of like how Gyms primarily profit from non-users).

- that many people who search for "what is a shallot" in fact do already know what a shallot is and are interested in gaining advanced/deeper information about the subject.

can confirm #1, fell for it... edit: not that I don't know what a shallot is X-)

I think you may have modeled the situation a bit inaccurately. To rephrase, "How many people who don't know what a shallot is and are searching Google for answers would pay $80?"