Currently, Asia has more than 40% of Internet users in the world. 3 of the top 5 countries on Internet are in Asia (China, Japan and India). SEMPO definitely recognizes that Asia is a very important market, and in order to learn more about the market, the board members are touring Asia to meet local members and industry leaders in June. As a chair of SEMPO Asia, I’m visiting Singapore, Beijing and Mumbai with the board members, and am very looking forward to the trip.

I’d like to thank SEMPO Asia Committee members who helped us so much to make the tour possible.  All of the committee members have their own job (many of them are CEO and President), and donated the time and resources to help us.

Press release: SEMPO Asia Tour

Paid or not, the “word of mouth” campaign using blog has been quite effective in Japan. Many people are aware that some of the bloggers may be paid to write the review, and still welcome the information especially since being compensated doesn’t mean that they’d write something that are not true. Several surveys done in Japan show that people trust and value what they read on blog posts, and often time what they read has an impact on their purchasing decision or action. I assume that Google Japan’s marketing team simply considered it as a promotional campaign, and nothing to do with a link building. (like they need more links to the site… for what reasons?) Though it’s sad that Google’s marketing team wasn’t aware of their own regulations.

I think that a point we should be discussing here is to whether such promotion should be “punished” as a link spam or not. Sure, downgrading Google Japan’s page rank seemed to work well as an example of what would happen to you if you do the same. But, if Google really believes that such campaign is nothing but a link building, how come they don’t approach to the company who offers such service, and bloggers who receive compensasion for the blog post. In fact, none of the bloggers were “punished” in any ways, and now the marketing company, “Cyber Buzz”, became well known through the news. (As of today, CyberBuzz’s page rank hasn’t changed.) Rather than to pretend punishing Google Japan, Google should put out the instruction in using such promotion campaign, and take real action to show that they don’t approve.

On CyberBuzz’s website, they uploaded a comment that they don’t pay blogger to write an article. They only pay when a blogger upload (promotional items such as) “parts” or “videos” onto the blog. In any cases, I think this type of promotion service will grow in Japan in coming years. It simply works in Japan.

1. We have a website in English (or one of the European languages), and want Japanese website created and optimized. Don’t know much about how to go about it, and open to suggestions. Oh, and interested in doing PPC campaign, too.
2. We just create a Japanese website, and need someone to optimize it. Will send you the English keyword list for SEO and PPC campaign.
3. We have a Japanese website and our in-house team is managing it. Experiencing some problems and can really use outside help to guide them to the next level.
4. We want to target Japanese market, but our English site should do just fine. 

Regardless of the development stage or the understanding of doing business with oversea markets online, they all face the issues in developing a website and the ad campaigns that would be well accepted in foreign market. When I respond to them with some points to consider, just to make sure that they are ready for the project, often times they are surprised by it.

When creating a website for different markets, you can expect many benefits from centralizing the work. For example, if all websites use the same template, you’d need to optimize one set of template, and all websites will be benefited from the changes. Of course, you need to optimize the content separately. At the same time, centralized efforts could create new issues such as geo recognition by the engines. Sure, we can now use the geo-setting to tell Google which market the website is for, but engines such as Yahoo don’t provide the solution, yet. It is easy to say that you just need to get the local domain, but in order to obtain the local domain, you need to have the registered office and business in that country in many cases.

Global websites are not “copies” of your home website

The language is most definitely the major player in developing global website. Translating the site into different languages only puts you to the starting point, and you are far from ready to enter the market. You need to research keywords in each market separately. Not by the language, but by the market. The keyword research tells you some unique differences in search words trend even among English speaking countries. I’m not just talking about the spelling. The culture and what’s “in” in that market has huge impact on the searched phrases. Also, correct translation doesn’t meant that your pages contain the most searched phrases. For example, a simple word like “picture” can be translated in several different words in Japanese. Depending on which word your translator chooses to use, it may limit your potential exposure in Japanese market, and the campaign may fail.

Large sized corporation may face bigger challenges

Bigger does not always mean better, and the same can be said about managing the global website. The communication break down, loosing control over the teams in different market and frustration with limited room to adopt local market trend and needs, etc. many companies who own global website deal with new challenges, which are not the issues when you operating a website just targeting one market.

It is said that more companies will develop global website in 2009 especially targeting Asian market. I am looking forward to doing the session “Key points in launching a global website” on March 24 at Search Engine Strategies New York. There are 3 in-house experts on that panel with me. I’m very happy that they agreed to share their experiences in developing and managing global website. In relation to the SES NY session, I had a pleasure of being interviewed by Glenn Gabe of G-squared Interactive. As you can read on his blog, he has experiences in working with global websites and understands the challenges, which made the interview fun and interesting. It seems that more companies are at the stage to tackle the issues now. I hope the session will provide information and ideas to make them prepared better in launching a global website.

While “Mobile Search” hasn’t happened in US, UK and in Europe, it has been happening… in fact it’s huge in Asia especially in Japan. I hope to introduce some ideas of how to integrate mobile into the marketing mix.

The session is moderated by David Radicke of  Radicke eCommerce and presented by Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile, Michael Boland of The Kelsey Group and me.

Since “Keyword and Content” session is targetted SEM beginners, I’m creating a presentation with basic, yet important information. But there are so many things to cover, I’m having a hard time making it to fit in 12min time.

The session is moderated by Mel Cason of Microsoft adCenter, and presented by Maxime Gradchamp of Trellian Europe, Tor Crockatt of Microsoft, Aisling Blake of Interactive Return and me.

Events such as Search Engine Strategies are not only a great places to learn, but also a great places to meet industry professionals from around the world. I hope to catch up with some familiar faces, and to meet some new.

Q1. Before we talk about SEO, can you tell me about your company, SEO Samba?

SEO Samba is the sole “organic search management platform.” We’ve coined the category name to distance ourselves from PPC management platforms that SEM specialists are already familiar with. SEO Samba’s focus is on maximizing web site performance with search engines and other “free-to-play” digital marketing channels such as blogs, news, video, social, and others. It enables SEM firms and SEO experts to manage an unlimited number of organic search clients, projects and web sites from a single interface—and change SEO best practices across them all with a single click. From a conceptual standpoint, we propose that web marketers and professionals deploy and enforce best practices from a single point rather than manually coding these evolving best practices into each of these sites while hoping that end-users will not gradually undo these practices.

SEO Samba also generates additional sales for our SEM firm partners by referring businesses who come directly to our web site. These businesses, mostly small and medium sized, are in need of extra services and want make the most out of the SEO Samba platform.

Q2. In United States and Western Europe, Google is pretty much the focus of SEO and SEM, but can others who wish to target other engines and other European languages benefit from the Organic Search Management Platform, too?

At the expert level, SEO Samba’s users have the flexibility to build SEO automation rules that best suit their market and any associated targeted search engines. As a result, any web marketer can benefit from using an organic search management platform.

SEO Samba’s rule engine is immediately portable to other languages and markets. However, some other important functionalities, as well as interfaces, need to be localized in order to take full advantage of the platform’s capabilities. We will start actively recruiting SEM firm partners in European countries in the second quarter of the year.

Q3. SEO is no longer just about the web site. Blog, video sharing and so many social media applications are out there. I am sure that it is getting to be very challenging to all the site owners especially to small-medium businesses with limited budget and manpower. Any advice on where to start?

A number of applications (.http://www.twhirl.org/,  http://ping.fm, http://friendfeed.com/ ) have hit the marketplace recently that seek to aggregate social channels into a single broadcasting interface. While interesting and useful to their target users, most focus on building as large of a distribution network as possible for individual mass-market users.

We address this challenge differently with SEO Samba and focus on the needs of small and medium business web marketers and giving additional ammunition to our SEO firm partners. We see organic search as a field increasingly going beyond text results indeed. Social applications, news, blogs, video are all “free-to-play” marketing channels but are costly to research, select, manage and integrate with other marketing endeavors. And from a SERP standpoint, there is more to it. As Google puts it in their FAQ, “Social media is great! But there are a few things to say about this… Social media can add buzz to your site, finding new visitors, people linking to you, etc. That’s a bonus and the more users that enjoy your content, often the better your site will show in SERPs. We want results to reflect what users are searching for, so social buzz can certainly be helpful.” At SEO Samba, we discriminate and prioritize channels to focus on the ones that have the potential to generate highest volume of direct traffic and business activity while improving your rankings in search engines.  In addition, we address the manpower challenge faced by SMB by providing a high level of integration and minimizing web marketers’ content creation efforts. For example, our first universal search module (provided free of charge) is a news module that provides a Google News-ready structure, news articles that are search optimized according to your chosen best practices, search friendly scrollers, automated RSS feeds creation, integrated with email newsletter platforms such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response etc. You can publish news across all your sites with a single click then aggregate news items across web sites to create unique newsletters and market to a cross segment of your email list, and, finally, save these newsletters with one click to any of your web sites. Each of our upcoming modules will provide the same level of details to ensure web site visibility, while expanding the least time possible from a user, content writer, marketer and SEO experts’ perspectives.

Q4. What do you think will happen or would you like to see in the search industry in 2009?

Search industry is not immune to the economic environment at large, even if it will hold up better than most. I think that most will revise growth plans according to the new deal. As a result, we will see some consolidation in the marketplace at the agency level. At the same time, some historical brick-and-mortar players who are still searching for their online model will be pressured to hunt for acquisitions and purchase platforms that can help them overcome their current digital strategy shortcomings. On the established search engine level, I would not be surprised if Microsoft finally cuts a deal with Yahoo for their search business and starts to aggressively circle Google by buying major players internationally in order to build a market share position they can hold on to. Meanwhile, Google will consolidate its online/offline ad products offering strategy and increasingly tweak its algorithm, weighing in more heavily on the social/buzz side of things, but in a very discriminating way. I expect to gradually see more variability in page results. However, this will not change fundamentally the playbook for good SEO work built around sound, engaging content and relentless optimization execution. Of course, we hope that web marketers will see SEO Samba as a good venue to help with this.

Q5. You moved from the RSS panel for scheduling conflict, what would have liked to tell the audience about RSS feeds?

As David Gilbraith put it, search engines answer three questions—How relevant? How fresh? How much? RSS answers the ‘how fresh’ question, and is therefore extremely valuable for SERPs. With improved standards for ping, RSS will become even more useful and could even replace crawling as a way for search engines to get results on pages. Some work needs to be done in terms of authentication and payload, but the general concept of delivering only fresh content/data at the time of publishing in place of have search engines crawling everything and looking for what’s new makes a lot of sense from a scalability stand point. So I believe SEO professionals should keep an eye on this.

From a corporate setting, RSS can have immediate and direct operational and marketing benefits on top of enhancing SERPs for web site owners. A good way to go about this is aggregating external RSS feeds and internal content through a publishing platform which will filter and repurpose content for distribution to a selected audience of employees, customers and partners. Here, the key is to harness the firing power of blogs,      aggregating and search optimizing the content and architecture (particular attention has to be paid to Google “juice” pass through when tracking subscriptions), and distribute automatically through specialized channels. This opens the door to creating new ad revenues as well. Some good platform resources for this include:

PressFeeds (news - standalone)
SEO Samba (web/news + Google news distribution)
Attensa (enterprise)
KnowNow (enterprise)
NewsGator (enterprise)

Thank you, Michal, for great insignt of the industry. I could sense your passion for the work you do, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in London!

The reason for my “but…” is that the engines never disclose the search volumes in Japan. The numbers came out from Japan market in past were all “number of accesses to the site”: “property popularity”and they didn’t represent the search related traffic. This is why Yahoo Japan, a popular portal site, has been mistakengly named as the popular search engine in Japan. Actually, Yahoo is also more popular (by number of PV) than Google in US, but no one point that out.

These engines still don’t officially announce the search volume, but I heard that the difference in search volumes between Yahoo and Google had shrunk to only 2-3%, which means that businesses targeting Japanese market must do well in both Yahoo and Google.

For the first time, I saw a data on Japanese search engines performance by search results page view. (See below.) Now, the numbers are not representing the search volume since some people may view multiple pages from one (1) search. Nonetheless, it’s a great data for marketers and advertisers.

[Search Result Page Views by Engines - Month of October 2008, Nielsen Online NetView]

• Yahoo Search - 3,536,499,000
• Google Search - 2,568,437,000
• MSN/Windows Live Search - 219,011,000
• goo Search - 144,852,000
• Biglobe Search - 97,199,000
• Nifty Search - 48,575,000
• Infoseek Search - 47,177,000
• Excite Search - 23,648,000
• Baidu Search - 47,380,000

Note: Search for goo, Biglobe and Nifty are powered by Google, and Infoseek and Excite are powered by Overture. The initial search may be conducted on the search top page, portal top page or from tool bars. Mobile search data is not included.

The data shows that Baidu is gaining the search market share. It may not be as quick as they’d like, but it already has more search page views than Infoseek and Excite. It could soon reach to the goo and MSN level. What data doesn’t show is the break down of the search categories. I’m assuming that the numbers include all the search result pages: web, category, image, video, news, music…  I’m guessing that Baidu is becoming popular through its video and blog searches rather than the web search.

The PPC advertisers in Japan should note that the PPC services on Yahoo site is still provided by Overture, which has a completely different ad network than Yahoo’s search network.

Q: Did you use Online Advertising services?

2008: Yes - 64.3%, No - 35.7%

2007: Yes - 63.0%, No - 37.0%

The report also shows that 11% of online advertisers in 2007 did not advertise online in 2008, while 12.3% started to use online advertising services in 2008.

The report did not show the detail of the businesses (size, type of business, type of advertising services used, etc.), but it sounded that they were big advertisers, who probably allocated more online advertising budget for display ads.

Let’s take a look at top 10 popular sites (by number of accesses) to advertise in 2008 in Japan.

1. mixi - mixi news ad box
2. mixi - branding banner
3. mixi - area branding banner
4. DreamNews - top banner
5. MoCovideo - top banner
6. soraejp - entry promotion banner
7. mixi - Ashiato (footprints)
8. Christian today - top banner
9. mixi - rotation text
10. Starcosme - text

It looks like mixi was the winner in 2008, and most of the ads made the list were banner ads. You hear that Yahoo Japan is one of the most popular sites in Japan all the time, but they didn’t make the list. So, why are banner ads doing well in Japan?

As mentioned, these businesses participated in the survey were large sized companies who could afford the banner ads expenses, and because of the size of the company, they probably felt that they should use the display ads regardless to the ads performance. It’s considered more as a branding tool just like TV ads. However, display ads actually performs well in Japan according to one study.

Q: Which ads do you most likely to click, display ads or text ads? (internet.japan.com / goo research, 100%=1082)

Graphic/Flash ads - 45.8% (495)

Text ads - 30% (327)

This doesn’t mean that text ads are not welcomed and don’t perform well in Japan. Well targeted keywords with creative ad copies perform really well for our clients at much lower cost compared to most of the banner ads. You do need to spend more time to create and maintaine the PPC campaigns, though. It is a fact that there aren’t much information/data about the overall online advertising market in Japan, which is badly needed. The good news for us is that 5 companies (Microsoft, Yahoo Japan, NTT Resonant, All About Japan and Video Research Interactive) have formed a group to conduct “Internet Advertising Value Index Project” in late 2008. They plan to publish a series of market reports in 2009.

Q1. How long have you worked in the search marketing industry?   What’s the biggest changes you’ve seen over the years related to the industry?

I have worked in the technology industry for 18 years, specially in Search for about  the last 8 of those. The landscape in this time has seen a lot of consolidation of company’s, the cleaning up of black hat practices (in some mature markets) and the evolving of Search into a legitimate digital channel by marketers (and agency’s)

Q2. What’s your description of the SEO/SEM industry in China? I’m sure that each Chinese speaking market (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) has its own characteristics, such as popular search engines. What are some of the differences?

I have heard some call Search in China, “The wild west” … I dont think it is that bad but would say the Search market in China is still in it’s infancy. Given this, SinoTech Group spends a lot of time educating marketers about the merits of Search.

We have continued to see our largest search engine, Baidu dominate the market (still holds 62% market share) and they are bringing a lot of new products to bear over the past few years. Google also has managed to slowly increase market share (now about 21%) but the likes of Yahoo! and Souguo are very much being squeezed.

The SEM approaches (and search strategies) are different for Baidu and Google- this needs a completely separate blog posting on this topic. Baidu is refining this as we speak and only released an API for agencies to use for automated keyword buying earlier this year.

Q3. Has SEO/SEM become one of the main stream marketing means in China, or does it still have a limited market? Are local businesses, especially the mid-small businesses using SEO/SEM to market their businesses, too?

There is a lot of SME’s using Baidu SEM, although most would not know it. A large network of Baidu keyword resellers work this SME channel and do the keyword purchasing on the behalf of small business (dry cleaners, flower shops etc). The SME’s may only get 1-10 keywords and there is little understanding of the more complex areas of targeting, quality scores etc. There needs to be a huge education to the agencies selling keywords about how to improve conversion and visibility to their clients. I suggest doing this will bring more awareness of upside and grow a real ROI approach to SEM.

Q4. What do you think need to be changed or improved in order for SEO/SEM to grow the usage and the market in China?

Stop black hat practices as it sets unreal expectations and will result in a downturn. Educate, Educate and Educate.

Q5. Should Western businesses be concerned about the censorship in developing SEO/SEM campaigns targeting Chinese market?

No. Of course there are going to be keywords that are sensitive but given their are issues around searching for them, I would not be bidding them.

Q6. In general, what are some of the challenges you face when doing business in China?

This is a very good question.  I had developed a number of companies in many regions before coming to China so expected  common issues/differences in language, business culture and business incorporation/tax setup etc.

However, the areas that has been most challenging is staffing - not simply the lack of talent but for me the lack of strong middle managers. We have found very strong executives, mostly returnees from US that have worked in US or attended grad school. These folks either come back to China and build their own start-up or become executives in established or emerging companies. The others in the team need a lot of mentoring to develop work processes and practices that are
measurable and aligned to team goals. For a successful rapidly growing company in China, personal development programs are critical.

Q7. What does make Chinese market so unique, and attractive to you?

Since I came to China almost 6 years ago, I have developed a love for the country and an appreciation for the history, culture and of course the food. It is embarrassing to say that now when I visit my home country of Australia, I find myself drawn to the China town area to ‘listen’ to chinese being spoken and get some food…although never as good as back in Beijing.

Q8. What’s the biggest myth that Western market has about Chinese search market?

Many myths…. The one I fear most is the one where Western company’s still think doing business in China is about transplanting the US or European business/marketing plan onto a local manager and expecting it to be equally effective in this market. Doing business in China (as other countries in Asia) is about localizing and adapting.

Please visit the post “Interview with Motoko Hunt about Search Around the World & SES Chicago 2008“.

Yesterday, I did Bruce Clay’s SEM Synergy interview, and talked about Search Market in Japan. It will be broadcasted on Webmaster Radio on Wednesday, November 5 at 12:00pm. MP3 file can be downloaded after the show.

It is graet to see that more people are interested in Asian market now. Asia is already the largest market online, and at the same time, it is still growing at very quickly. I can see why US and European businesses are interested in the region especially China, India and Japan. The Asian culture seems to be so much different from Western cultures, perhaps it can be intimidating at the beginning. The good news is that you have an access to market specialists at events such as SES Chicago and on Internet (lots of blogs specialized in different markets). I hope to do my part in successfully bringing non-Asian businesses to Japan and other parts of Asia through search marketing.

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Interview: Motoko Hunt (Founder, Japanese Search Marketing Strategist)

One of the more enjoyable things we get to do on the ‘Digital Marketing Inner Circle” is interview interesting people I meet and get to know by being involved with the industry. This interview is with Motoko Hunt, Founder and Japanese Search Marketing Strategist. Born and raised in Japan, Motoko is now the chair of SEMPO Asia and has been the co-chair of SEMPO Japan since 2005.  She’s been active in this industry for at least ten years and seen a lot of changes happen.  Over the years she has found her niche in Japanese Search Marketing, including SEO and Paid campaign. I was fortunate to be able to take of her time and posed a number of questions to her.

Q: How did you become involved in the search industry?

Back in mid 90’s, I used to localize US companies websites and handing their online marketing such as site registrations, banner ads and press releases targeting Japanese market. As the market shifted and technology advanced, I started to focus on the SEO/SEM, and established AJPR in 1998.

Q: How can you use search to benefit smaller clients?

Apart from the budget size and maybe the manpower, the great thing about the search marketing is that it’s a fair game to everyone regardless of the company size. The search marketing can expand their market reach (from local to nationwide or even worldwide), improve the communication with their existing and potential clients, and help business owners to make an efficient and smarter decisions on investment. I believe that the search is the most effective marketing tool for your money, if you execute it right.

Q: Do you think it’s more difficult to keep up with industry trends in search marketing than it was a year ago? Why or why not?

I don’t think it’s more difficult, but I think that the type of the changes in trends are different in recent years compared to what we experienced in past. Up until a few years ago, the trends were mostly about the engines and the search. Now, integration of the different marketing outlets (web, search, social media, press releases, off line ads, etc) became more important than ever. It’s not just about SEO or Paid campaigns anymore. It’s like, “Ok, we have some experiences with the search marketing, and know how it can benefit us. Now it’s the time to coordinate it with other marketing outlets to create a campaign that will really benefit the business.”

Q: Tell us about a successful search marketing campaign that you’ve run…what made it work? What made it fun? How did it benefit the client?

One of the success stories of my clients is that they increased the conversion rate from the website by 130% within 6 months after the campaign started. We optimized the site to rank within top 3 in both Yahoo Japan and Google Japan with 95% of their target keywords, improved the landing page content and the internal linking. The fun part was being able to show the great results in ranking, increasing number of accesses to the site from search, and the conversion rate to the client to make them happy and to feel that they made the right choice to invest in the search marketing.

Q: How important is it to be “visible” in the industry these days?

Very important even if you are only targeting the local market. Various survey results show that most people search the web to obtain the information about the services or products that they plan to purchase. More visible you are in search, better chance you have to interact with the potential customers to influence their buying decision. Even in the markets where people still transact off-line, they do research online. I think visibility in the industry is very important.  Many potential customers tend to gravitate to “industry experts” they see at the various conferences.  Even more important is to have your thought leadership represented with blogs and articles.

Q: How does link building fit into social media? Does PPC fit in at all with what you do?

I don’t like using social media as a link building platform to improve your PR. When people use it to build links, it often leads to link spam, and destroy the user experience. If the users don’t like what they experienced there, they won’t come back, and it would defeats the whole purpose of “social media”. The links to your site/pages in social media really become valuable when the links are put on the page content such as blog body from a relevant site, and not in the comment section. The paid campaign could bring some successes through both keyword match and the content match on social media sites. Be selective with which social media sites to run your content match campaign.

Q: Have you used any “questionable” techniques in search marketing?

Nope. I don’t chase the algorithm, either.

Q: What industry trend leaves you cold and why?

Not a particular trend, but when a new trend comes in town, many people stop what they were doing and start to chase that new trend. It frustrates me. New trend simply means there is one more thing that you may need to consider. Those companies have successful website and the paid campaign know the importance of covering the basics and of having a solid project goal.

Q: What is the best part of your workday and why?

End of the day? LOL. One of the best part of my workday is to reporting the improved results to the clients. SEO and SEM are continuous efforts as the market changes and your competitors always improving their sites and campaigns, it’s very important to be able to bring the continuous improvements to all aspects of the success measurements such as ranking, conversion rates, and saving client’s money.

Q: What advice would you give to young women trying to make a name for themselves in SEO right now?

I’ll give the same advice that I give to my son and daughter. Whatever you decide to do, work hard and study hard to become very good at what you do. There’s no short cut. Networking definitely helps especially in this industry, but if you don’t have the knowledge and the skills, you won’t go much far. Believe in yourself, motivate yourself and push yourself. You are your best cheerleader!  A blog is often a great way to start making a name for yourself.  If your ideas resonate with people they will follow you and the more you are followed the greater your exposure.

Since Google entered in Korean market in 2005, their search market share has been kept small at 5% level. Not even Google has been able to take the market share from Korea’s number 1 search site, Naver.

Google has R&D Center in Japan and China, both of which markets they were able to gain the market share in recent years. Now, Google ranks at #2 in both Japan and China. Being able to provide the services that work in each market through R&D Center rather than to push the same model used in US looks like the key to their success in Asian market.

Not getting good search results was the top reason for using multiple search engines. About 25% said that what they want to search makes difference in which engines to use. Instead of looking at the page 2, they go to next search engine to search the same keyword phrase. (People looking for shopping and entertainment related information tend to use Yahoo, maybe? I know that B to B businesses usually do better with Google Japan.)

This results mean that if you are targeting Japan market, you need to do well (both SEO and PPC) with both Yahoo Japan and Google Japan, and not just one of them. It also shows that people are reading the search results closely instead of clicking what comes up at #1 or #2 automatically. Check your page description in search results for your target keywords to make sure it has a good description of the page.

This is Yahoo’s logo cheering for Japanese team. Japan’s Matsuda won bronze medal in the 200-meter butterfly.

This is Google Japan’s logo on top page today. Google.com has a logo with monkey on rings. It looks that they are using animals from Chinese Astrology.

  1. What is the focus of your presentation at SES San Jose?

There are so many interesting things happening internationally that the challenge for the speakers on this panel is choosing a select few!

I think there are a few key topics to this presentation: namely what is happening online in China, some of the key companies and trends, and how is search different in China, discussing some of the unique differences about Chinese search vs. other markets.

While some aspects of Search are generally universal, each market and particularly the Asian markets like China, Japan (as I learned from Motoko) and Korea have both language and cultural differences that Search expresses in unique ways as compared to the West.

2. Should Western companies consider doing SNS and/or mobile integration projects?

As search at some level is a reflection of what online users are saying and doing, one of the early topics of my presentation focuses on Social Media in China and the incredible story of TenCent, a Chinese company that that leveraged instant messenger (IM) as the core focus of its strategy to become…

…a leading portal,
…the leading blog site,
…the leading casual games site,
…and one of the few existing Chinese companies with the potential to become a future player in Search.

What is particularly interesting for Western companies is that not many of them even found a way to monetize IM yet TenCent ($524M ‘07) is much further down the road to success than a comparable social network like Facebook (roughly $37M ’07) at this point.

Tapping into social trends and understanding culture is not easy.  If your company is considering this, be prepared to face some really strong, well-financed and savvy local competitors.  There are still opportunities but in many ways China is ahead of (and different from) the West on this trend.

3. What do you hope that attendees will go home with from the session?

I hope that the audience will learn a few things about China’s online market, primarily the key differences and opportunities that we see from a search perspective and even how those business opportunities reach beyond search.  Mobile search and web surfing in China are interesting but not there yet.

4. You’ve been on the panel of Search Around the World session at some of the SESs in past. Have you noticed any differences in audience’s interests in China/Asia over time or by region?

The only thing that is consistent in China at this point is change ;).

The leaders in terms of market share within a vertical (i.e. Portals) are relatively unchanged; however, what we are seeing overall is a growing shift in dollars from display to search (37% in ’07 to 51% predicted by ’10) and a likewise shift in dollars from traditional to digital media.

The latter shift in the market is primarily driven by larger advertising agencies, both global giants and large, local players.  Based on publicly announced digital advertising target growth rates in China, if agencies come close to their targets it should have a material impact on the entire online advertising value chain in the next couple years.

5. What are some of the typical mistakes that Western companies make when trying to enter Chinese market?

Many of the Western failures we’ve witnessed in China are the result of applying strategies that led to market success in the West would naturally lead to success in China.

The Chinese are not impressed that you are #1 in Germany or the U.S.  If you build a big size company in mainland China, they are relatively impressed; however, buying the present China local market leader is no guarantee for future business success in China.

As Yahoo and eBay China learned through their respective acquisition strategies.  Being #1 and staying #1 in a rapidly developing market is no easy task and it needs to be managed locally, not from the international headquarters.

6. What are the challenges that Western companies would face in doing SEO/SEM in Chinese market?  - Any advice to people or companies considering to do business with China?

The China is a market is developing too fast to be managed internationally.  That strategy has often failed in recent years.

Like Japan, China is not a market you can easily enter with just a few meetings, a handshake or an acquisition and then centralize decision making back to the company’s headquarters abroad.

If the Chinese are not sure if you are going to be in China long term, they will not believe it is worth investing the time to develop a relationship with you.  Relationships are developed more carefully in China and other Asian cultures relative to the West.

Instead, we recommend Western companies try to identify potential local partners who have a history of success, understand the unique ways that business is done locally, and have enough international business practices and shared culture that they can communicate effectively with you.

Working with a local partner(s) that has strong local knowledge and with whom you share a trusted intermediary is highly advisable.  You will need to trust your local Chinese partners to make decisions.  Given the speed of the market, the decision making process needs to be pushed out to the local decision makers.

7. What is your view of Search market in China in 2 years?

What I like about Search in China is that a number of key growth drivers appear likely to remain strong in the years ahead.

Access to new desirable content (i.e. latest peer to peer product recommendations) should be a key driver.  Related to my earlier comments on Chinese users habits of publishing more relative to other markets, new content will be a key driver for search as more content needs both organization and visibility.

The last and probably pretty obvious driver is the sheer number of online users potential (1.3B) and relatively small penetration (<20%, 230M) means that on the back of just new online users, unless we witness.

One key factor is the growth just within the online user population with more than 70% of those users able to access with broadband.  Broadband enables both more rich experiences but just as importantly for regular search users a broadband connection will also provide faster access to content that search users seek.

The increased user base, significant growth in websites and web pages, high search adoption and activity among user base.

8. I know that you live in China now, but what did bring you to there at first?

First was curiosity.  I’d read a few books in high school by author James Clavell, whose stories focused on different parts of Asia.  I always thought the culture and societies of the East were most interesting.

Second was opportunity.  After University, one of my roommates moved directly to Beijing in ’93.  I went to visit him the following summer in ’94.  I saw Shanghai when there was only the Pearl Tower in Pudong, a far cry from today’s skyscraper filled skyline of China’s and the world’s leading financial institutions.

9. What do you miss most about things back home?

For Hearts and Minds, People first.  Technology simply cannot replace being in someones presence that is of great importance be it family or friend.

For Body, Cheese steaks, Soft Pretzels and Burritos.   Food is home on many different levels.

10. What are you looking forward most from SES San Jose?

Primarily I really look forward to being surrounded by some really talented and passionate people who like to share knowledge.

As a close second to that, I ALWAYS look forward to whether Kevin Ryan will comment on my ‘shooting’ glasses if he gets a chance to introduce me.

I’d like to thank TR for sharing very interesting insights about Chinese market. I think many issues he pointed out are very informative to not only SEO/SEM businesses, but also to anyone who consider doing business with China.

See you in San Jose, TR!

On July 7th, Google Japan posted a logo using Marc Chagall’s art.

He was born on July 7, 1887.

These are all good points, and not just for Japanese people, but I think all of us have experienced the same frustrations at some point in time. I see issues like #2 (heavy image files), #4 (PDF file), “#10 (contact info) and #20 (English menus) all the time when I review localized corporate websites.

1. The site content has not been updated for months
People are looking for fresh content. There’s no excuses for corporate websites for not updating the site regularly. What year is the copyright on your site?

2. Using image files that are too big/heavy
Keep in mind that when you are in Japan, it takes longer to download the sites hosted outside Japan. Even though many of them are on broadband, I still hear people complaining about timing out when download pages and especially the files.

3. Websites with “under construction” pages
The site/page shouldn’t go live until it’s completed!

4. PDF file opens/downloads when click the link
It is very annoying, when you are expecting to go to another page, but file starts to download instead. I’ve seen some “localized” websites using this function, avoiding to deal with pages with double byte characters, I guess, but chances are, they cancel the download and leave the site. By the way, handling Japanese characters is not complicated at all.

5. Everything is in Flash (especially on index page)
All flash index page with no “skip intro” or any text links to other pages are like traps, and out of the question! Many non-Japanese corporate sites forget to localize flash content into Japanese.

6. Pop Up windows
Some pop-ups actually improve the usability, but don’t over do it.

7. Keep clicking the links, but can never get to the information looking for
It’s like the never ending automated phone greeting, isn’t it? You click a link hoping to see the information page, but next page has more links for you to select. In some cases, the link brings you back to the page you’ve been already, or want you to e-mail them for information. I bet some of the site owners never actually used their sites.

8. No pages with product/service list
I guess they are not in business to sell their products or services. :))

9. Site suddenly makes noise or plays music without warning
We don’t need websites to work as an alarm clock. People in Japan have desks right next to each other without partitions in many offices in Japan. Loud beeping sound from the website when your boss is on an important call could mean a pay-cut or another unpaid overtime.

10. No contact information
It speaks loudly how important the customers are to the corporate, doesn’t it? If you are afraid of SPAM, at least set up a contact form.

11. Can’t identify what the site is about
I don’t think that the site owner knows it, either. LOL
Poorly translated sites often have this problem. Don’t trust the translators. Don’t let your friend who speaks in Japanese translate the content. Being Japanese or able to speak in Japanese doesn’t mean that he/she is a good writer/editor.

12. No product/service information on site
The era of website functioning as a corporate brochure ended long ago!

13. Site changes the browser size
Don’t control my browser. I can adjust the size IF I want to.

14. No on-site search
Especially with a large site, where it’s difficult to find the information, the on-site search is very important. If you set up a on-site search, be sure to check some of the search results to make sure that the pages you want people to see shows up in the results. By the way, don’t think that it’s easy to find the information on your site. People don’t know how your site is set up as well as you do.

15. Map of office location is not clear
They pretend that they want people to visit the office, but not really?

16. Using harsh colors (bright yellow, red, etc.)
The soft/comfort colors are “IN” in Japan now. Change the color scheme for Japanese site.

17. Small text
I saw a guy using magnifying glass to read message on his Blackberry. Hope I’ll never have to put a magnifying glass on my PC monitor. It’s just sad… Hate getting old. lol
Many Japanese websites now offer buttons to change the text size on their site.

18. Official corporate blogs with too many inside jokes and stories
Official corporate blogs are not office cafeteria, and should stick with the topics suitable for public audience.

19. No right click
Another example of site owners worrying too much about protecting themselves and forgetting about the usability. Remember, the right click has more functions than to grab images.

20. Site menus in English
If you are serious about going after the Japanese market, show 100% commitment. Things like English menus only tell the visitors that you are not serious about their business. I hope I won’t see another site with contents on image files (translated text on image files) either… but chances are I will find them.

As said, all the issues are reasonable and would’ve been prevented if they create the sites with users in mind. Once the people come to your site, the usability of the site could make or brake the success of your web business.

The mobile Internet and mobile search started back in the ’90s in Japan when Japan’s NTT DoCoMo created “i-Mode” service, which was to provide a mobile Internet browser and the connection to view mobile websites from DoCoMo’s cell phone. The mobile Internet market has grown rapidly in Japan since then, and now the stats show that there are more access to Internet from mobile than from PC in Japan. Many Japanese conduct all of their Internet activities from mobile!

Currently, the mobile Internet service is available from multiple service providers. The tricky part is that there are 3 major standards for mobile web (i-mode, ez-web and Vodafone), and a site made for i-mode may not show up correctly in other browsers. It is possible to create one mobile web site that can be seen correctly on all three browsers, so do consult with the professionals when you are ready to create one.

Once you have a mobile site, you’d want to be found by mobile users, right? What you may want to note is that each service provider has a set of “official mobile sites” including an official search engine. As I mentioned above Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, therefore, Yahoo is the official search engine for iPhone in Japan. Google is the official search engine for KDDI’s “au”. The mobile users can also access to “non-official” mobile sites, which means that iPhone users can also use Google’s mobile search. However, it’s most likely that Yahoo would be their primary search engine. In order to improve the search rankings, you can optimize your mobile site. Since mobile search engines have different algorithms, the way you optimize the mobile sites is different from what you do with PC web sites.

The paid ad placements are also available through Google and Yahoo/Overture. The type of keywords, and number of keywords used with mobile search can be quite different from what you see with PC version of search engines so you should always conduct the mobile keyword research to create a list of words. You need to create a different set of ads, too, not just because mobile ads tend to have smaller ad space, but also because the search intent of mobile users are usually different from that of PC search users.

Don’t take a mobile search project as a twin-sister of your existing web search project. It’s a different animal, and should be taken seriously.

But we rarely see them on Social Networking Sites or blogs. Where do they go and what are they doing on Internet?

NetRatings research shows that “finance” related sites and “news” related sites are very popular among 50+ people in Japan. They also like to visit travel related sites. I’m sure that this trend will change as younger generations who are all over SNS sites grows into the 50s and beyond, but for now, if you are after 50+ market, check out the finance, investments, news and travel sites to see how you can reach them.

According to Seed Planning’s report, the mobile advertising will become 100 billion yen (US$1 billion) market in 2008 in Japan from 81.5 billion yen in 2007. The number includes all of the advertising activities on mobile platform such as banner ads, affiliate ads, search paid ads and mailing ads. If it continues to grow at the same pace, the mobile advertising market will reach 250 billion yen by 2011.

The similar advertising is available for both PC version of the web and mobile version of the web. However, what works on PC market doesn’t always work the best with mobile market. For example, the report shows that the e-mail ads work better with mobile market than PC market. To run a successful advertising against mobile market, the advertisers must be flexible in selecting what style of advertising works the best for them instead of just re-cycling the same information and the practices they used in PC market.

What makes Imakore different from other bookmarking services is the function lets users to write and to read the comments right on the bookmarked page. With the tool bar, you can see how many Imakore users are on the same page at the same time, and read other users comments as well as leave the comments on the “particular area of the page” where you want to comment. It’s like a bookmarking version of Pop-up video. It’s definitely a fun way to bookmark pages and to socialize with other users.

Many people use the social bookmarking services in both US and Japan, but I sometimes wonder what percentage of bookmarked sites are actually shared with other users. I mean, it seems that most of the users bookmark their favorite sites but don’t care to see the sites bookmarked by others. There are only a few bookmarking sites appear in the search results. I think that Imakore found a way to make it easier to share the bookmarks.

Sure, there’s a concern about what people may comment. You don’t want to see bunch of “Woo, this is funny!” or “OMG, it’s crazy” kind of comments over and over. But when you come across with a site with some clever comments that make you laugh or go “hmmmmm”, it’d show the value and I can see that people may be hooked on this type of service.

By the way, what made me laugh when I first landed this website was their demo on the top page. It shows someone searching “Yahoo” in Google to go to Yahoo site. LOL!

User generated content is great, but it’s also true that the benefits of Web2.0 can also become issues and problems to the site owners and users. Beside the obvious issues such as:

• too much information makes it difficult to find what you are looking for,
• many conflicting information (not sure what to believe),
• difficult to manage and to control new content,

I think it’s a bigger problem in Japan because of their tendency to:

• believe what they read, especially on the popular sites and the authoritative sites,
• believe that many user generated content are monitored and trustworthy,
• believe that it’s secure and safe,

and sadly, the anonymity side of these application brings the worst of some people, which leads to problems like this bomb threat on Wikipedia, and hate messages on blogs and rapidly growing unofficial school sites.

Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has “Web2.0 study group”. I’ve read their meeting minutes. The discussion has been focused on how to implement Web 2.0 application rather than the issues and the problems with them. MIC also has the Online Information Security site, which talks about the virus, spam mails, online shopping, security, privacy, phishing, etc., but nothing about the user generated content.

I value and believe in the freedom of speech, but I’m also concerned about these problems, which will only increase in near future, and won’t go away. Is it a site owner’s responsibility to monitor and manage the content? Maybe to the certain level, but if they over do it, it would kill what great about these applications.

Last year, Cabinet Office Government of Japan (CAO) conducted a survey about the Internet Security Awareness. It shows that 45% of people has concern about the safety of Internet, mainly about the scams and the security issues. I thought it was interesting that the online security issues related to dating sites and community sites were limited to children under 18 on that survey. More than 70% of people think that the site owner is responsible to monitor and manage the content.

goo Research and Internet.com’s survey results show that people started to lose interests in SNS sites about 10 months ago. Since mixi opened in February 2004, has the SNS market in Japan peaked out already? If so, what do SNS sites need to do to survive or even to increase active users?

With my experience, it was fun to be invited and to invite friends to join these sites at the beginning. Till then, I was visiting lots of websites owned by my friends to communicate by posting comments on their BBSs. It was getting to be a lot of work, and was definitely time consuming. When mixi opened in 2004, we invited each other to join so that we can all communicate at one place. It was great. Then we started to join other SNS sites. I’m now registered at 20+ social media sites. Trying to check in and update these sites is like 2003 all over again. Since there aren’t much differences among these SNS sites, you just need 1 or 2 sites where most of your friends and contacts are. And, I’m sure that’s what many SNS users in Japan are thinking. If you are not mixi, differentiating your services from others is the key to success or survival in next 12 months. That fact that many Japanese are now looking into “specialized SNS sites” (i.e., music only, local area specific, or age specific) backs up my point. Sure, these sites may never become as big as mixi or Gree, but they would probably have more active user rate.

The new Google Japan’s top page has 4 tabs below the search box. Each tab has several links with icon to some of their popular pages and tools such as Gmail, YouTube, Image search, Blog search and Calender. According to Google, the change was made in response to many feed backs from the users complaining the difficulty of finding tools and pages within Google. (Like Google.com, there were links to these tools and pages on the left top corner of the page, but not visible enough for Japanese users, I guess…)

I think this is a huge change for Google, not because of the layout change, but because it can be translated as their first step into a portal site. In fact, their tools such as Google map and Google earth, and YouTube acquisition have helped them becoming the #2 property in Japan for the first time in history last year. While most of the people still come to Google to search, other tools and services are definitely driving the access to the site.

Still, I’m a bit sad to see this change…

Many of them said that they e-mail/text in a tub, and also listen to the music with cell phone. Though not many said that they browse web sites at this time, I’m sure it will catch up especially since many of them are already checking e-mails. All they need is to receive some e-mails from friends about some interesting sites. They may soon searching a product they just saw on TV commercials before they came to take a bath. It’s a known fact that people are most likely to be on Internet after 10pm at home in Japan, but this mobile Internet trend is already changing that data.

Anyway, being water resistant got to be one of the must-have features of cell phone in Japan.

The Internet penetration rate in Japan is very high (70%). However, especially in a country side and for older generations, it can still be a little intimidating. To help these people using Internet, I saw places like City Hall, Legal Affairs Bureau and Tax Agency set up several PCs in the office for people to file paper works online with the assistance of office staffs.

I also realized that something never change. E-mail may replaced written letters in many cases, but in occasions like weddings and funerals, it’s still very important to many people to follow the traditional manners. The problem is that younger generations have no idea of how to go about it, and that’s when Internet comes in handy. In fact, those how-to websites in the special occasions and forums are very popular in Japan. You don’t want to give only 5,000yen, when you are expected to give 10,000yen, and make sure that a ribbon on the package points the right way. People are going to talk, and you know how quickly those talks would spread!

One day at a restaurant, I saw a discount info on a table. In US, it’s too late for that day, and hope to remember to access the site to print out a coupon for the next time. But in Japan, you can scan the QR code on the discount ad on a table with your cell phone, and show what comes up at the register to receive the discount. In many occasions, I was reminded how Japanese businesses were willing to make things easier for customers. To be successful in Japanese market, improving the usability of your website is definitely one of the key points.

According to Yano Financial, “Kuchikomi blog” (word-of-mouth blog) advertising market in Japan grew to more than 3 billion yen market in 2007 from 0.9 billion yen market in 2006. Their another survey shows that more than 80% of net users have actively taken the advise/information they got through “word-of-mouth” on the net. Almost 50% of female in 30s responded that they talk to other people about their experiences and opinions about the products and the services that they purchased. In 2008, success of ad campaign may be up to how well you incorporate word-of-mouth campaign into your cross marketing strategies.

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”.

Now, there are other reasons why Baidu may give you a different search results, i.e.; links doesn’t help much, but what’s most interesting to me is that their engine was developed in a double-byte character country, China, and according to Baidu Japan’s executive, they’ve refined the engine so that it understands the relevance between the search words and the page content, and that’s not necessarily by picking up the keyword in content. Both Google and Yahoo have been working on this, too, at their Japan lab, but not much more than picking up the keywords on page. I’m curious to see how well Baidu’s engine can grasp the content and ranks the pages accordingly.

In Japan, we used to have several search engines including some Japan’s original engines, and there was a time when all of them were doing well. However, after we lost engines such as Netscape, AltaVista and Lycos, and engines like goo and infoseek decided to go with Google, Japan’s search market has been dominated by Yahoo and Google for years. It’s also the fact that the algorithm of Yahoo and Google has become very similar, and as a result, you get exactly same or similar search results no matter which search engines you use. It can’t be good for the users.

I think that Baidu is on a right track by trying to give different search results to the search users. If their search results are different from what you get from Yahoo and Google, “and” the results are highly relevant to what you are looking for, I think that they have a good chance of gaining a market share in Japan.

Yahoo Days members aren’t as active as other popular SNSs in Japan such as mixi and Grree, and if and how many users they can maintain and hopefully gain in up coming months are questionable. I’m sure that they’ll add more functions (blog, image and video sharing, etc.) to it, which would make Yahoo Profile even more like a social networking service. However, it would still be another SNS site, and can deny the feel of Yahoo Japan being a follower in this area rather than a leader.

Yahoo Japan’s member database (Yahoo ID holders, Yahoo’s broadband users, Yahoo mobile users, etc.) is huge and is very valuable to many out side businesses. I think the real value of Yahoo Profile would come when they can combine all of these database, and release it to outside vendors.

Sure, MSN would love to get their hands on Yahoo users and advertisers, but just by combining two companies, would they become #1? I think not. Regardless of who you are or what business you are in, you need to know what you are doing wrong and why, what works for you, and what’s not. Most importantly, you need to know why your competitor(s) is doing better. Without knowing your strength and weakness, and that of competitor’s, the chances are, you’d make the same mistake again and again. Also, it’s important to know who you are, and what people (users, customers, etc.) think who you are. I think of Google as “search engine that offers other cool services”. I think of MSN and Yahoo as “portal sites with search function”. I hope if and when they merge, they’d further improve what’s working well for them, and come out as a brand new search power service.

Yahoo is doing well outside North America and Western Europe. In Asia, local search engines (Naver in Korea and Baidu in China) are doing far better than Google, Yahoo and MSN. Why is that? Maybe the key to success is not becoming bigger, but thinking smaller… instead of providing the one-slap service to everyone, give it a room to offer some unique services to each market.

At larger SESs (London, New York, etc.), this session is usually broken up in 2 sessions, one for Asia-Pacific and the other for the rest of the world. Asia-Pacific session is great for people interested in this area of market. We give lots of statistics, points to keep in mind in doing business in these markets, etc.

I try to update my presentation for each conference. It’s quite a challenge to create a good presentation with good amount of information, which is not boring at the same time. I think that some of the information, which are very much “ordinary” to me as I’ve been doing this work for more than 10 years, can be very valuable to others who are new to the business in Japanese market. So I try to go back to the basic and review the whole Japanese SEO/SEM processes and the Japan market, and include them to the presentation as well.

Right now, I’m challenging myself to reduce the number of slides, and considering to add some interesting “stories” to the presentation. Or… should I stick to the fact???

Late last year, Japanese government put out a statement requesting all the mobile service providers to use a filtering system to stop children under 18 to access certain sites*. And, in early December, Japanese Telecommunications Carriers Association and the service providers such as KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank and Wilcom have agreed to set up the filtering against all of their users under 18 as a default.

40% of Mobaga Town users are teenagers. With the filtering system set by these mobile service providers, teenagers won’t be able to access the site anymore, even though DeNA has been taking serious measures to ensure the safety of young users. I’m sure that the filtering system will be improved in future to have more flexibility, but for now, it will cause not only NeNA, but also other mobile sites some financial issues.

*In addition to adult sites and gambling sites, SNS sites are on the black list.

Yahoo Japan entered the new year with their new home page, which has a stronger feel of the portal site than a search site. In fact, they got rid of the category list from the home page, and while it still has a search box right below the Yahoo Japan logo, my eye went straight to the news feed placed in a center of the page, and didn’t see a search box at all. Maybe they are trying to re-focus what they do best in 2008, which is to provide the overall services such as news feed, shopping, auction, etc.

Yahoo Japan has been one of the most visited websites in Japan for years, and many visits come from Yahoo BroadBand users who set Yahoo Japan as browser home page, and from services like Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Auction, and Yahoo E-mail. While SEO for the organic search is important, if you wish to reach Yahoo Japan users, Overture Japan’s paid campaign is definitely the way, and it looks that it’s more important now with Yahoo Japan’s new home page design than ever.

According to the survey, BBS (bulletin board services), Net auction and surprisingly the Video sharing lost some popularity in 2007 from the previous year. And, people think that they’d spend less time on SNS sites in 2008. Also, it shows that Online shopping and Blog-browsing were two of the most popular online activities among the survey participants.

Ok… people shifted from Net auction to Online shopping, and from BBS and video sharing to SNS in this year, and now they want something new. So, what’s the next big thing for Japanese market?

While I can’t wait to see the next big thing for Japan, I’m thinking that personalization may become the keyword for these existing services to survive and even to grow in Japan, beside “mobile”. While I’m not a big fan of the personalized search, I think personalized SNS and Net auction would bring up their declining popularity. It would be a huge challenge for the providers as it means that they need to come up with different plans, solutions and services for each demographic. But it would worth the investment. Let’s face it, teens have completely different interests and takes on things than people in 40’s. It’s just like I don’t want to receive another vampire invites on facebook. I’m not interested in becoming a zombie, people!

Actually, SNS for limited audiences is already available in Japan. Businesses using it for employees and customers, colleges using it for students and teachers, and local governments using it for residents. And, they are getting great feedbacks from the users. If these services for smaller but very targeted market become more available, it would be a good news to us online marketers, too, as those markets are already defined. Well, maybe it’s my wishful thinking.

Happy holidays!

With Internet technology, the size of the company or the location of the office no longer limit your market to your local area or just in US. In fact, at SES Chicago, they had 2 “Search Around The World” sessions, one for Asia-Pacific and the other for Europe and Latin America. All sessions, including my presentation, are well covered in many blogs.

I’m an active member of SEMPO. We had a round table Q&A session with engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) in the evening of the 1st day. SEMPO members met engines to ask any questions that they may have in a relaxed / casual setting. I heard many good feedback from the attendees. We’d like to bring it to other conferences and events where SEMPO goes.

(Sorry for not posting any new articles here for a while. November has been a really crazy month.)

More information about SES Tokyo 2008.

The longer answer to the question is…

Currently, there are 2 domain extensions available for Japan, “.xx.jp (such as .co.jp for companies and .ac.jp for schools)” and “.jp”. In order to obtain “.xx.jp” domain, you must have a physical address in Japan in addition to other requirements, while “.jp” domain is available for anyone in the world. Since “.jp” domain became available only several few years ago, and it wasn’t easy to obtain “.xx.jp” domain, many website owners went (and still going) with “.com” domain extension.

According to the domain survey in Japan (against 300 internet users between 20s and 50s) , 79 people responded that they had own registered domain. 67 people had “.jp” domain and 23 people had “.com” domain. The main purposes of obtaining a domain was to have their own E-mail address (62 people) followed by to use for web site (business or non-business, 19 people).

For foreign businesses, having “.jp” domain for their Japanese web site may work well in showing the seriousness of doing business with Japanese customers… it may even give an impression that the company is in Japan, in which case, the search users may choose to come to your site instead of other “.com” sites, but less likely since average search users only read the title and the description and not the domain name.

Back to the question. “Do ‘.xx.jp and ‘.jp’ domain rank higher in the search results than other domains?” Major search engines in Japan such as Google, Yahoo and MSN all have two choices in displaying the results: “All of the web” and “Web pages in Japanese language”. Unlike engines in countries like UK, France and Germany, there isn’t a choice for “Web pages in Japan only”. It means that you don’t have to have “.xx.jp” domain in order to rank in these search engines. In fact I haven’t had any difficulties ranking my non-jp domain client pages to rank well. Only time it may give you a push is in the local search, but if you are a foreign company, that’s not your focus anyway.

I’m not stopping people from registering “.jp” domain, but what more important are to rank well in the search results, and to have a site that won’t disappoint the visitors with issues such as usability, translation quality, and customer services.

NetRatings’ reported last year that more than 2 million Japanese were using YouTube as of March 2006. It also showed that Japanese visited more frequently and spent more time on YouTube than any other countries in the world. Having the broad band connection, and more phones with video viewing/recording capability definitely helped Japanese to go YouTube crazy.

Then, Japan’s own video sharing site “NicoNicoDouga” (nicovideo.jp) opened this year, and became the most popular video sharing site in Japan with more than 3.42 million registered users in Sept. 2007. What did make it more appealing to Japanese? The comments function. Instead of just sharing the videos, you can communicate with other users through comments. The site has more of “community” feel than “business” like feel, which is appealing to many users.

Technorati published the blog reports in April 2007. According to the report, Japanese is the number one language used to post blog in the world. (Japanese: 37%, English: 36%, Chinese: 8%, Italian: 5%, Spanish: 3% …) Note that many blogs in Japan are “journal” type blogs talking about their daily lives, etc., but I see that more and more business/information type blogs are created by individual, businesses and organizations.

Back in 90’s, before blogs, videos and social networking sites, Japanese were crazy about creating their own personal web sites. While Japanese worried about privacy and fraud on Internet, they liked sharing their thoughts, experiences, etc., and most of all, they liked to connect to their friends and family on Internet. Visiting friend’s web sites to read their new pages and to leave comments on BBSs in daily basis. Just when we were getting board with doing the daily chores, the SNSs came, and we all jumped on it, particularly “mixi”.

It was great. You could connect and communicate with all web friends at one place. You could also create communities within the communities to “belong” groups that match to your interests. These SNSs are all equipped with blog, photo and video sharing function, as well as reading news, etc. But, the hype has to die down sometime. The latest report shows that page view on mixi went down in August for the first time.

So, what’s the next big thing that meets our needs to belong and to share our opinions, experiences and interests.

In the meantime, blogs and SNSs are finding new audiences in businesses and organizations. They are using it to inform and to communicate with employees and customers. It’s a step up from good-old news letters that only push the information.

More and more people are accessing Internet from their cell phones. In June 2006, research by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication showed that there were more mobile Internet users (approx. 69.23mil) than PC Internet users (approx. 66.01mil) in Japan for the first time in history. It also showed 57% (approx. 48.62mil) of the Internet users (approx. 85.29mil) were using both PC and mobile devices to access Internet. But, does this mean that everyone should put the priority in mobile search and mobile SEM?

That depends on who is your target market, and the type of services and products that you offer. If your target market matches to the demographic of the users of “blog search”, “image/photo search” and “video/music search”, you may want to create a mobile site and start a paid campaign right away. Also, many research shows that books, CDs, tickets and other low cost items ($20 or less/item) are popular items purchased using cell phone. Mobile Internet is convenient especially when you know what you want, but it looks that people still go to PC for some researches and readings when they consider purchasing expensive items.

Keep in mind that average mobile Internet users in Japan are younger than that of PC Internet users. Many Internet users under 25 only access Internet from their cell phone. I think that some of the ways to do well in mobile Internet is to have a site that is more appealing to younger generation, has an easy purchasing process, and has steps to prevent from shopping frauds.

The search box has been used in ads for a while in Japan, but was really taking off when I was in Japan back in July. I saw it on TV ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, ads on train/subways, etc. etc. It was every where. I was curious, and tried several search phrases in different ads to see if they were ranking or not. I thought that their page should come up high in the search results along with the paid ad, if the search phrase was their company name, brand name, or product name, but some (like DoCoMo’s “Ano bucho” seemed to be too generic.) What I found was that in most cases, they rank high only for the paid ads in the search result page, and were no where to be found in the organic search results.

When you run a campaign like this, it’s like announcing the world, “If you search for this word, you will find us on the results page right away!”, and you should make sure to be on the 1st page of the search results 24-7. I was surprised and disappointed by the fact that many businesses chose not to optimize the landing page for the phrase. When the campaign money runs out, or the daily budget runs out, if you don’t rank well organically, someone else (maybe your competitors) would benefit from it.

• Is site (pages) in Japanese?
• Is site (pages) indexed by Google and Yahoo Japan?

While site/pages being indexed by the search engines is important, that certainly doesn’t mean that your pages would appear in the search results where you wish your page to appear. If you want your pages to show up in the search results for the search terms in Japanese, your page must include the search term in Japanese.

Both Google Japan and Yahoo Japan have two choices of search, “all the web” and “all Japanese pages” (note, it’s NOT “pages from Japan” so that your site doesn’t have to be hosted in Japan nor has “.co.jp” domain). When a search user set it for “all Japanese pages”, only the pages in Japanese, which include the search term will show up in the search results. Even when “all the web” is selected, if the search term is in Japanese, the page must have the search term in Japanese in order to be included in the search results.

Google and Yahoo’s search robots crawl sites by tracing links. If your site has a decent links coming from other websites, these engines should eventually find your site. Since having quality incoming links from relevant sites helps to improve the ranking of your pages in the search results, in my opinion, the efforts should be put to increasing the quality incoming links and not to submitting the site information to these engines. (Sure, you can still submit the site URL to these engines from their webmaster page.)

Again, let’s think about why you want your site to be indexed by the engines. Site being indexed should be one of the steps to be found in the search results, and not be the goal. As variety of studies and researches show, if your page doesn’t rank in top 10 search results, it’s highly likely that people won’t find you from the search. What bring people to your site is not the fact that your site is indexed, but the optimization work with thorough Japanese keyword research.

As you may know, we use 4 different character sets (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Roma-ji) to write. Many words can be written using any of these character sets and all 4 sets can be used in one sentence. There are 50K+ Kanji characters, and children learn about 2K of them by the 9th grade. When I type in Japanese using PC, I enter words phonetically using alphabet, and select Kanji character I like to use from the choices that the software gives me. Over the years, I leaned many Kanji characters that I didn’t learn at school from doing this process. On the other hand, when I hand-write, I can’t remember how to write some of the Kanji characters that I learned in school. When I have this problem, I open note pad on my PC and type a word to show the character. I know… really embarrassing.

I just read an article about the research done by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan about the Japanese language skill of Japanese living in Japan. It shows that many of the survey participants, who often use PC to write, are experiencing the same changes that I am experiencing. 60.6% of them said that they look up printed dictionary, 35.5% said that they use Kanji dictionary software on mobile phone, and 21.3% said that they type it on PC, when they can’t remember the character when hand-writing.

What’s interesting is that most of them said that they use more Kanji when they write using software on PC, word processor, etc. compared to when they hand-write. This could mean that more words in Kanji character are used as the search words…

I entered “Def Leppard” in the search box - ’cause I love them Top 10 results for “What?” included pages about Def Leppard from Wikipedia (Japanese page), Amazon, Universal Music, Hatena Diary, YouTube (English page) and some personal websites. Tope 10 results for “Who?” were very similar to that of “What?”, but the description was more about the band’s history. I didn’t see Def Leppard’s official website anywhere. It looked that it was designed to pick pages in Japanese.

The pages in the results for “When?” all had some dates (concert date, CD release date, etc.), and the pages in “Where?” results had dates and places such as concert and auction. The pages in “Why?” results all had words such as “because” and “that’s why”, and majority of the top 10 results for “How” were auction pages.

I know that it’s just a test version and just started, but I was a bit disappointed to see not much differences between some of the result pages. I’m sure they’ll make improvements to the search results in future. Otherwise, I don’t see the need for 6 different result pages.