Motoko’s weblog

The devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Northern part of Japan on March 11 (Japan time). While I hear lots of up-to-date information in Japanese, I find the information in other language is very limited. There are more than 2 million foreigners live in Japan, and many tourists visit Japan throughout the year.

Most of the sites listed here are in English. Some of them offer the information in other languages, too. (You’ll see a link to other language on their site.) Hope the information here help non-Japanese speakers in Japan, and non-Japanese speakers who know someone in Japan.

If you know of any useful sites and the services not listed here, please post it in the comment. Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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 »