However, enabling Emoji search on mobile is much more than a “fun” factor, it helps search experiences. For example, when you search for “Dentist + (emoticon for phone)”, Baidu would give dentist sites with phone number in the search results. Since you are searching with mobile, you could then call a dentist straight from the search results.

To access Baidu mobile, you can scan QR code on the page linked above, or go to http://m.baidu.jp. They offer Baidu webmaster tool for mobile here: http://webmaster.baidu.jp/mobile/

Here’s a list of Emoji per provider: http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/service/3G/mail/pictogram/list.html

The report shows that more than 20% have Smartphone, and more than 25% of people under 39 have Smartphone. I was surprised to see that more than 28% of teens responded that they had Smartphone. Note that 14.5% of teens said that they didn’t have any cell phones.

Smartphone users in Japan

In Japan, you cannot keep the same number if you switch the carrier, and that’s probably why 11.4% of Smartphone users also have a regular cell phone.

The carrier data by the service providers shows that Softbank has the biggest Smartphone market share (61.5%) followed by Willcom (15.4%) and NTT do.co.mo (14.8%). Kakaku.com points out that NTT docomo just entered the Smartphone business in late 2008, and already became the 3rd largest provider. 55% of Smartphone users responded that they had either iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, both are provided by Softbank.

Smartphones popularity in Japan

More than 66% said that they purchased Smartphone to view PC version of websites. (You typically view mobile version of website such as i-mode site from cell phone in Japan.) Having access to variety of applications and to have a large sized monitor are also the top reasons why they purchased Smartphone.

It’s exciting to see the Smartphone gaining the market share in Japan as the advertisers and the marketers can do so much more with Smartphones than with regular cell phones.

While “Mobile Search” hasn’t happened in US, UK and in Europe, it has been happening… in fact it’s huge in Asia especially in Japan. I hope to introduce some ideas of how to integrate mobile into the marketing mix.

The session is moderated by David Radicke of  Radicke eCommerce and presented by Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile, Michael Boland of The Kelsey Group and me.

Since “Keyword and Content” session is targetted SEM beginners, I’m creating a presentation with basic, yet important information. But there are so many things to cover, I’m having a hard time making it to fit in 12min time.

The session is moderated by Mel Cason of Microsoft adCenter, and presented by Maxime Gradchamp of Trellian Europe, Tor Crockatt of Microsoft, Aisling Blake of Interactive Return and me.

Events such as Search Engine Strategies are not only a great places to learn, but also a great places to meet industry professionals from around the world. I hope to catch up with some familiar faces, and to meet some new.

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.

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.

Many of them said that they e-mail/text in a tub, and also listen to the music with cell phone. Though not many said that they browse web sites at this time, I’m sure it will catch up especially since many of them are already checking e-mails. All they need is to receive some e-mails from friends about some interesting sites. They may soon searching a product they just saw on TV commercials before they came to take a bath. It’s a known fact that people are most likely to be on Internet after 10pm at home in Japan, but this mobile Internet trend is already changing that data.

Anyway, being water resistant got to be one of the must-have features of cell phone in Japan.

Late last year, Japanese government put out a statement requesting all the mobile service providers to use a filtering system to stop children under 18 to access certain sites*. And, in early December, Japanese Telecommunications Carriers Association and the service providers such as KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank and Wilcom have agreed to set up the filtering against all of their users under 18 as a default.

40% of Mobaga Town users are teenagers. With the filtering system set by these mobile service providers, teenagers won’t be able to access the site anymore, even though DeNA has been taking serious measures to ensure the safety of young users. I’m sure that the filtering system will be improved in future to have more flexibility, but for now, it will cause not only NeNA, but also other mobile sites some financial issues.

*In addition to adult sites and gambling sites, SNS sites are on the black list.

More and more people are accessing Internet from their cell phones. In June 2006, research by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication showed that there were more mobile Internet users (approx. 69.23mil) than PC Internet users (approx. 66.01mil) in Japan for the first time in history. It also showed 57% (approx. 48.62mil) of the Internet users (approx. 85.29mil) were using both PC and mobile devices to access Internet. But, does this mean that everyone should put the priority in mobile search and mobile SEM?

That depends on who is your target market, and the type of services and products that you offer. If your target market matches to the demographic of the users of “blog search”, “image/photo search” and “video/music search”, you may want to create a mobile site and start a paid campaign right away. Also, many research shows that books, CDs, tickets and other low cost items ($20 or less/item) are popular items purchased using cell phone. Mobile Internet is convenient especially when you know what you want, but it looks that people still go to PC for some researches and readings when they consider purchasing expensive items.

Keep in mind that average mobile Internet users in Japan are younger than that of PC Internet users. Many Internet users under 25 only access Internet from their cell phone. I think that some of the ways to do well in mobile Internet is to have a site that is more appealing to younger generation, has an easy purchasing process, and has steps to prevent from shopping frauds.