Japan SEM

Google Japan added tabs to the front page. This seems to be there to make Japanese users aware of all of the features that Google has. I’m not sure if this is just temporary or not but someone should have noticed long ago Yahoo Japan has the market share because people actually know what it has to offer.

I’ve even seen Google ads for iGoogle in Social Networking Site Mixi to try to attract Japanese users. The new tabs ads menus for

Recommended: Mail, Youtube, News, Maps, Transit
Various Searches: Images, Blogs, Literature, Desktop
Convenient Tools: Calendar, Documents, Reader, Toolbar
For Fun: Youtube, Piccasso, Blogger, & Google Earth

I actually give the Japan Team credit for getting the US team to understand they have to start thinking about the average users in Japan to increase marketshare. The only gmail users I know are people in IT or bilingual.

It seems as though the Yahoo has been busy in the last 3 months upgrading the international sites to the Panama system.

So for Asia

Taiwan
Japan
Hong Kong
Korea

Are all upgraded to the Panama system.

Now let’s hope the continue to roll out new tools for it.
& get rid of the dang zip files made from the Reports.
csv, or excel format was really quick & easy to download & open.

Our company didn’t have a bad migration from Overture to the new Panama platform as many had in the US. Japan has been ported over to Panama completely & finally we have quality score. One of the accounts that I manage in Japanese had a significant decrease in cost after Quality score was in place.

I understand what Yahoo Search (Still Overture in Japan & Korea) is trying to do. On the Panama platform it’s becoming a global platform.

One thing I’m waiting for is to see if they will introduce the publishers network to Japan. Advertisers in the US go for Google but budgets for Yahoo Japan generally are 3 times what advertisers spend on Google.

There are already corporate tools being launched & if I go to the seminar for it I’ll let you guys know.

http://adwords-ja.blogspot.com/

The other day I attended a seminar demonstrating the new Website Optimizer tool inside of adwords.

Today Google Japan has released a new blog for the Japanese market

 http://adwords-ja.blogspot.com/

頑張ってください。。

& if you are lucky enough to visit Google Japan’s office you’ll see they are a bunch of friendly folk…

Over the weekend there seems to have been a Yahoo! Japan update. I notice a lot of my domains that lost rankings in the February update bounce back with even better stats than before. I even picked up a few first page spots for unbelievable keywords…

Love Ya Yahoo.. Thanks…

Yahoo!Japan starts みんなのトピックス(Everyone’s Topics) . The format is similar to Digg the social news site dominating in the US. Instead of starting off with no content Yahoo!Japan seemed to team up with existing social news sites Newsing, Buzzurl, & Choix.

Initially it seems the links are actually SEO friendly & I assume this is to encourage users to post their content. I would recommend using the service now before in the future the URLs move to being redirects. Since the Yahoo! directory went this way years ago I’d only assume that Minna No Topics will go this route also after it gets popular.

It might take a little while for users to get used to it but I’m sure those in SEO are already taking advantage of the site…