Motoko’s weblog

On July 27, Yahoo Japan and Google Japan announced that Yahoo Japan’s organic search results will soon be powered by Google. Needless to day, this change would have a huge impact on many search marketers and site owners targeting Japanese market. Today, I’d like to go over the facts mentioned in the announcements, and examine how it may change the search marketing in Japan.

Fact 1) Yahoo Japan will use Google’s organic search engine
I personally welcome this change in regards to the algorithm producing the search results. Unfortunately, it is a well known fact that those link farms and the paid links can improve the organic ranking in Yahoo right now, and many search marketers and the site owners in Japan think/believe that SEO is nothing more than Continue Reading »

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)

Continue Reading »

I just posted my presentation about the Search in Japan from International Search Summit in London last month.

As you can see, my presentation shows bunch of numbers, which don’t mean much to you unless you were in the audience. Here’s what I talked about.

Market:
94 million Internet users
75.3% Penetration rate
4% access Internet from TV and gaming devices
73.4% on Broad Band
90% of Continue Reading »

I had a short interview yesterday, and the question was “What do you want Google to bring for Christmas?” My answer was “easier algorithms”. OK, maybe “easy” wasn’t the right word, I should’ve said something like “standardized” or even “fare” and this is my thought behind this answer.

We have a pretty good understandings of the algorithm. We know about the keyword, the links, the TLD’s, the hosting, etc., but we also know that even though you are dealing with the same Google, what seems to be the good practice isn’t always so in other market. For example, the link strategies that works in US market may not be the best approach in other markets even though Google tells you it works the same.

No matter how easy or complex the algorithm is, as long as many sites compete to be on the 1st page where only 10 links are available, SEO will play an important part of your search strategy. Social media is great, but what we found from the surveys is that people don’t always click a link in Continue Reading »