Motoko’s weblog

One of the latest news items in Japan’s mobile market is that the iPhone will be available through Softbank in July, which means that Yahoo is set as the official search engine for iPhone in Japan. Yahoo’s search team has developed iPhone/iPod Touch search services, which has functions to switch between iPhone/iPod Touch screen and PC screen. The functions on iPhone/iPod Touch screen have been adjusted to provide better usability and the search experiences. It also has image search function.

The mobile Internet and mobile search started back in the ’90s in Japan when Japan’s NTT DoCoMo created “i-Mode” service, which was to provide a mobile Internet browser and the connection to view mobile websites from DoCoMo’s cell phone. The mobile Internet market has grown rapidly in Japan since then, and now the stats show that there are more access to Internet from mobile than from PC in Japan. Many Japanese conduct all of their Internet activities from mobile!

Currently, the mobile Internet service is available from multiple service providers. The tricky part is that there are 3 major standards for mobile web (i-mode, ez-web and Vodafone), and a site made for i-mode may not show up correctly in other browsers. It is possible to create one mobile web site that can be seen correctly on all three browsers, so do consult with the professionals when you are ready to create one.

Once you have a mobile site, you’d want to be found by mobile users, right? What you may want to note is that each service provider has a set of “official mobile sites” including an official search engine. As I mentioned above Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, therefore, Yahoo is the official search engine for iPhone in Japan. Google is the official search engine for KDDI’s “au”. The mobile users can also access to “non-official” mobile sites, which means that iPhone users can also use Google’s mobile search. However, it’s most likely that Yahoo would be their primary search engine. In order to improve the search rankings, you can optimize your mobile site. Since mobile search engines have different algorithms, the way you optimize the mobile sites is different from what you do with PC web sites.

The paid ad placements are also available through Google and Yahoo/Overture. The type of keywords, and number of keywords used with mobile search can be quite different from what you see with PC version of search engines so you should always conduct the mobile keyword research to create a list of words. You need to create a different set of ads, too, not just because mobile ads tend to have smaller ad space, but also because the search intent of mobile users are usually different from that of PC search users.

Don’t take a mobile search project as a twin-sister of your existing web search project. It’s a different animal, and should be taken seriously.

When we talk about Internet users, I don’t think that people in 50s and up are what first comes to our mind, unless of course, that’s what your target market. I thought it was very interesting when I read a report by NetRatings showed that the 50’s and up demographic made 23% of Internet population in Japan, and it had higher growth than the average Internet population growth. For example, number of users in 60+ increased 22% during the past 12 months.

But we rarely see them on Social Networking Sites or blogs. Where do they go and what are they doing on Internet?

NetRatings research shows that “finance” related sites and “news” related sites are very popular among 50+ people in Japan. They also like to visit travel related sites. I’m sure that this trend will change as younger generations who are all over SNS sites grows into the 50s and beyond, but for now, if you are after 50+ market, check out the finance, investments, news and travel sites to see how you can reach them.

People have been saying that “mobile is the next big thing” for a while in US, but mobile has been “happening” in Japan for years and continues to grow.

According to Seed Planning’s report, the mobile advertising will become 100 billion yen (US$1 billion) market in 2008 in Japan from 81.5 billion yen in 2007. The number includes all of the advertising activities on mobile platform such as banner ads, affiliate ads, search paid ads and mailing ads. If it continues to grow at the same pace, the mobile advertising market will reach 250 billion yen by 2011.

The similar advertising is available for both PC version of the web and mobile version of the web. However, what works on PC market doesn’t always work the best with mobile market. For example, the report shows that the e-mail ads work better with mobile market than PC market. To run a successful advertising against mobile market, the advertisers must be flexible in selecting what style of advertising works the best for them instead of just re-cycling the same information and the practices they used in PC market.