Motoko’s weblog

Yahoo Japan has been testing the search results display by mixing some of the Google’s search results for some time. Now, Yahoo Japan’s search results is identical to Google’s search results in many cases if you use Chrome browser. In other words, depending on which browser you use, you get different search results in Yahoo Japan right now. (See Yahoo JP results in Chrome vs. FireFox and Google JP results for the same keyword.)

Since Yahoo Japan and Google Japan announced its plan for search service tie-up (both organic search and PPC services) in July, the search business partnership has been getting much of the attention and some CONTINUE READING »

Last week, Google announced the changes in AdWords ad format for several markets including Japan. The change allows us to use more characters/letters in title and ad description. This is a great news to the advertisers in Japan, who’s been having difficulty with not being able to place some of the longer keywords in the ads.

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When you see everyone around you on Twitter and Facebook, you think, “Wow! Twitter and Facebook are taking over the world!” But almost every time I talk to people who are not in this industry, I find that they have no idea of what I’m talking about. Some may be just starting to use Twitter, but not aware of any use of Twitter other than to chat with their friends and family, and have never even considered using it for business. Others may have been on Facebook a few years back, but haven’t been using it for a while since they graduated from University. Twitter currently has less than 10% reach in US market. This is probably much smaller than most of Online Marketers think. Perhaps, it’s good to step CONTINUE READING »

I wrote an article “Social Media Marketing – The Japanese Way” for ClickZ earlier this month. The article received more than 300 re-tweets in 3 days (currently has 350+), and it got me thinking how little information about non-US market is available, even in the world of “Internet”, which supposed to connect everyone, everywhere.

Actually, there are lots of data available from different markets. But if you speak (read/write) in English, you typically see the information available only in English. This is probably why, my article, which was in English, was well received in US and other non-Japanese speakers.
Btw, CONTINUE READING »