Motoko’s weblog

In addition to the regular Yahoo algorithm updates, time to time, Yahoo Japan has its own algorithm changes, which are unique to Japanese market. In December 2009, they had another major updates, and many experienced the changes in ranking. Here is a list of some of the changes I’ve seen in the past month.

• The authority pages are valued more
• The hub pages are valued more
• The accessibility and the file size are valued more

Of course, the competition level is different depending on the keyword, and that also determines how much of the changes you saw since the last update.

Now, in order to benefit from this update, I recommend following optimization work: Continue Reading »

Baidu Japan started its mobile search service. In addition to mobile sites, it searches web, images/photos and videos. The unique service of this new search engine is that it lets you search with “Emoji” (emoticon) , too! Some of you may remember that iPhone struggled to gain the market share in Japan when it was introduced to the market. One of the biggest reasons why people didn’t want to use iPhone was that you couldn’t use “Emoji” with iPhone. Since then, Softbank added this Emoji function to iPhone, and now it’s the most popular mobile phones in Japan. In fact, Emoji is a big part of communication method for Japanese people not only with instant messaging, but with blogs, SMSs, etc. One of the first functions added to mixi (Japan’s popular SNS site) was a list of emoticons, too.

However, enabling Emoji search on mobile is much more than a “fun” factor, it helps search experiences. For example, Continue Reading »

Yahoo Japan added a new function to its keyword assist, which will automatically convert Roma-ji typed word into Japanese characters (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, see below.) as the searchers type. This could change your target keywords since many searchers tend to pick a word/phrase from a list to get the search results rather than to complete typing their original search query. (Note: When typing Japanese characters, many of us type the words in Roma-ji format using Roman letter alphabet, then select the desired format (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, or in many cases mix of 2 or more styles) from a list of words that have the desired character combination. I know, it’s time consuming to say the least.)

New Yahoo Japan Keyword Assist

The keyword assist function was added to Yahoo search box to help searchers narrow the search results by providing a list of popular search queries including the word/phrase typed in the search box. (See below.) Continue Reading »

Yahoo Japan announced today that Overture Japan will operate under Yahoo Japan brand starting October 1, 2009. Overture is currently a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan, providing the PPC services for PC and mobile for Japanese search market.

This may be a way to strengthen Yahoo’s online advertising services, which currently provides display ads, text ads, e-mail ads and affiliate programs. By bringing in Overture’s PPC services into Yahoo advertising service plan, they will be able to provide the total online advertising services to its customers. Continue Reading »