Motoko’s weblog

Yahoo Search (Japan) had 2,609 mil search queries during the month of April, which made them the number 1 search site in Japan. According to the report by NetRatings (netratings.co.jp) “Search Service Usage Report” (the search conducted on PC at home and work), Google search had second most search users and the number of search queries in Japan.

Fields: SearchBrands/SearchUsers/Reach/Queries/PageViews/Sessions (thousands)

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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 »

Baidu.com announced the release of analytics tool, “Baidu Statistics”. This is the first analytics tool to be offered in Chinese search engine industry.

With “Baidu Statistics”, you can track and analyze the site user behaviors on site, which data can be very useful to improve the marketing activities online. The function includes, traffic analyzer, source analyzer, conversion analyzer and site analyzer, and it gives 20+ reports with graphs. The tool also work with the advertising campaigns Continue Reading »

It’s been 3 weeks since Baidu officially opened its services in Japan after 10months of beta phase. While the news has been picked up by some search industry media, I haven’t heard any user side feedbacks. None of my friends in Japan have tried the search at Baidu, yet. So, the question is… “Will Baidu gain market share in Japan?

During the bata phase, Baidu’s robot crawled Japanese websites like crazy. It was so crazy that many site owners set a tag to avoid Baidu robot from crawling their sites. Since its official opening, they decreased the frequency of robot crawling, and some owners may already switched to let it crawl the site, but still Baidu’s index volume is probably far less than that of Yahoo Japan and Google Japan, which may be translated as “Baidu’s search results may be completely different from what you get from Yahoo or Google”. Continue Reading »