Japan and China came out big in "the face of the web"
According to “The Face of the Web”, which was published by a market researcher Ipso Insight, Japan remains the world’s No.1 Internet based economy with about 9 in 10 said to have used the Internet in the past 30 days, and spent 14 hours in average per week online. Chinese Internet users spent 17.9 hours […]
2 million Japanese enjoy YouTube
The Internet Usage in Japan (by Net Ratings) reports that more than 2 million Japanese had accessed to YouTube even though the site is in English. The number of Japanese users who access to YouTube has been rapidly increasing since December 2005, and reached to 2.12 million in March 2006. Average Japanese user accessed 3.2 times […]
What does prompt Japanese to search?
According to the survey done by Opt and Cross Marketing, the “newspaper articles” was the number 1 reason (37%) why Japanese male searches, and the “conversation with family and friends” was the number 1 reason (49%) why Japanese female searches. The research also shows that average Japanese search users view up to 3 results pages. […]
SEMPO Japan's 2nd annual Japanese SEM market research
SEMPO Japan has announced the results of Japanese SEM market research at the SES Tokyo on April 20. The results show that more than 60% responded that they use SEM as a mean to improve the brand recognition, and more than 31% responded that they have a separate budget for SEO in 2006. Overall results […]
goo to offer Wikipedia search in Japan
One of Japan’s oldest search sites, goo, has added “encyclopedia search” button on its dictionary search service, “goo dictionary“. This is the first tie-up search service with Wikipedia in Japan. goo dictioary has about 3 million users/month, and one of goo’s most popular services. Wilipedia now has more than 200,000 Japanese pages.
Become's Japanese version
The shopping focused search site, Become.com, has opened its Japanese beta version “Become.co.jp” on the 10th. The site users can search the information such as products, reviews, and EC site comparisons in Japanese.
New "Google mini" released in Japan
On 12th, Google announced the release of new “Google mini” in Lego-ish simple design, the search appliance for mid to small companies. Google picked Japan as the first market for the new “Google mini”, and this version is 100% localized for Japanese language.
Google Japan's ads for mobile
Google Japan’s “Google mobile ads” started on the 7th of April. The ads show up on Google.jp’s search results. In addition to the title (with link to the site) and the description, the ads show a telephone icon, which can be clicked to make a call to the advertiser without dialing the numbers.
Japanese Google users like Google Earth
According to the survey by Japan.Internet.com and JR Tokai express search, almost 80% of participants responded as they’ve used Google Japan. Q: Do you use Google? 39.9%: Yes, sometimes 39.0%: Yes, always 18.2%: Have heard about it, but haven’t used it 3.0%: Not sure what Google is Q: Which Google services do you like? 36.5%: […]
Yahoo! Japan's keyword input assist
On March 15, Yahoo! Japan opened the beta version of Keyword input assist. When a search user types the first several character of the search word, it will display a list of related keywords. This function is available to the Windows users with IE 5.5+ and Firefox 1.0+, and Mac OS X users with Firefox […]