Japan SEM

This is my キーワードアドバイスツール

無料のseoツールなので是非使ってみてください

URL(日本語ドメイン）:http://キーワードアドバイスツール.jp

日本と海外のキーワード検索できますので宜しく。。。

ナイン

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…

Now that Myspace has a Japanese
interface I had to think about if it will take over as the leading SNS for Japan
. Thinking
about it I realize that there is no way it could take over. I’m a user of both & know why Japanese like Mixi so much. I could easily see why many will like MySpace also.

Myspace screams American style, & Japanese get a chance to chat for free with native Americans. This is a huge plus for those studying English. Japanese that I’ve seen using Myspace are not there trying to link up with other Japanese. This is why it won’t be for everyone.

Mixi does the task well of letting Japanese link to people who interest them. You feel funny on Myspace not having your own picture on your profile. But on Mixi also 90% of the profiles have a completely random icon. These are uploaded & selected by users, most who feel they just want to be on the net without someone knowing exactly who they are. Being American I also find it extremely hard to remember who is in my friend’s list. I have to close to 1000 people & because no one uses their real pictures I always forget who my actual real friends are too.

Mixi has provided solutions for this lately letting users write memo’s on their friends profiles so they can remember who’s who.

Not everyone is going to want to speak to non Japanese, it’s going to be hard to compete. One advantage that MySpace does have is the music technology, Mixi only recently added video support & that’s only for subscribed members at around 500 yen a month.

Anyway let’s see how it goes next year, I could be wrong.

This is a video I took while riding the subway here in Tokyo. It shows the use of suggested search in advertisements. Since Japanese in Japan don’t type in URLs because of high chance of mispelling it, or just can’t remember it advertisers came up with the solution of putting native Japanese suggested search in ads. It actually seems to be working because pro marketers I know say that since it’s in Japanese people are actually remembering the phrases & searching for them.

The next step of course is domains in native Japanese.

Baidu the Chinese engine has launched it’s Japanese search engine at Baidu.jp. The Baidu engine is currently without ads but I’m sure that won’t last for long. I have a feeling that Baidu is going to cut more into Google’s share of the Japanese market than Yahoo’s. Yahoo! Japan has the lead in Japan for search use.

Paypal which was Japan compatible for a few years now finally did a move to try to get Japanese people to actually use the service. They put it in Japanese finally. Even though there is a huge misconception that English is the international language of the internet you’ll find out how quick that concept flies when nobody in the country knows about your service.

Hopefully this will spurr young folk to try their hand at eccomerce. There are so many young people with various ideas & doing online transactions in Japan is not an easy task. So good luck Paypal 頑張って下さい。。