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On October 21 2014, Yahoo introduced two new changes to its search engines result pages (SERPs), adding additional unique elements which distinguish it from Google. The comparison to Google here remains highly relevant as Yahoo still renders the majority of its SERPs based on Google’s search index database.

One of the changes falls in the category of disaster management, as it indicates the latest updates for affected areas, such as ‘flood’, ‘electricity fallout, or ‘typhoon’. In the exemplar screenshot below, the two labels ‘alert’ (red) and ‘warning’ (yellow) are new. According to Yahoo, another label might appear displaying refuge-related information.

These warning updates can be found by simply typing [area]+[warning] into the search field, with several possible variations for both parts. The [area] part can contain keywords such as prefecture, city or town names, whereas ‘warning’, ‘alert’ or ‘disaster information’ can be used for the [warning] part of the search phrase.

The second change has a rather more commercial flavor to it, compared to the changes mentioned above. It, nonetheless, has a big impact on the SERP design for the affected keywords. Yahoo started a partnership with some (to be exact, 15, at the date of writing) of the biggest retail brands in Japan and introduced so called ‘search coupons’.

When searching for the brand term of one of those partner brands, such as, Lotteria, Family Mart or Subway, a coupon will appear on the first or second position of the SERP. However, this will only happen if the promotion is still running. Here is an example for the Lotteria brand term.

Here is another example with the coupon being placed on the first spot of the SERP.

Once the SERP is displayed on the mobile phone, it only needs to be presented at the shop/store and it can be redeemed without printing or downloading anything else beforehand. An overview of all currently active coupons can be found here.

This is a rather convenient and quite visible way to promote coupons. It also does not contradict the concept of searcher intent, since people probably wouldn’t mind a discount when searching for a brand.

For Yahoo, this means another source of income and, as it is still aggressively trying to make up for its revenue losses from its desktop search ad revenue, this can only be positive news. Naturally, Yahoo!Japan does not reveal any prices for advertisers; however, interested parties can submit an enquiry to Yahoo directly here, using this form.

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It is almost trite to say that Japan is mobile- and smartphone-crazy. In fact, statistics indicate that 86% of the people use mobile phones and 46% use smartphones. True, the smartphone penetration is much higher in Singapore (85%) and South Korea (80%). However, Japanese mobile user numbers increase daily and this upward trend in mobile usage is likely to continue, considering that it is one of the countries with the highest frequency of internet usage in the world.

Overall, Asia has seized the reins of the mobile revolution: no other country outside of Asia currently evinces smartphone penetration which is higher than computer penetration.Throughout Asia, businesses are tailoring their products and services in accordance with mobile-first requirements, keeping mobile usage always at the forefront of their minds.

This provides an excellent opportunity for Asian companies to set the trend, when it comes to designing products and services catered to the mobile revolution and to the growing mobile-user population. The only caveat that one must add to this is that smartphone and mobile penetration in Japan is currently not higher than PC penetration (88%), thereby suggesting that it remains the more digitally conservative occupant within the Asia-Pacific region.

Nevertheless, Yahoo! Japan has certainly shifted its main businesses onto the mobile platform. This is understandable, since mobile ads constituted a fifth of the corporation’s total value in its recent report and mobile ad revenues rose by 74% to Y17.4 billion ($160m). Mobile ads now make up 33.7% of total advertising revenue.

Indeed, Yahoo! Japan’s revenue from mobile users is estimated to reach 25% of its overall revenues by 2020. Simultaneously, smartphone users are predicted to rise by 50% or more, thereby inevitably meaning that Yahoo! Japan’s budget planning is conducted around mobile and smartphone users’ preferences, trends and usage patterns.

Much of the last quarter’s growth stemmed from smartphones and tablets bringing in business to the mobile advertising division, display advertising, search and adverts listings divisions. In terms of concrete figures, Yahoo! Japan brandished a total visitor count of 36m in the first quarter of 2014 and an increase of Y18.1billion in revenues originating from mobile users (this figure includes other channels besides mobile ad revenues).

A rise in mobile advertising revenue inevitably means boosting overall search ads revenues. So overall, it seems likely that the company will maximize on the soaring mobile ad revenue per page view and that it will leverage its online dominance in Japan to further target mobile users and to drive mobile revenue growth.

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Naver Korea announced that it will soon start the beta-testing of a new ad-format called ‘Power Content’, which is a new paid way of promoting blog content. The announcement on October 17, 2014 stated that the new ads will be appearing on both PC and mobile universal search results pages. It is a major step as Naver is getting its feet wet in the field of paid content marketing.In the beginning, only six fields of business will be eligible for the new power content ads: Education, Finance, Law, Oversea Studying, and Weddings. When a user searches for a targeted keyword phrase of one of the companies within the industries above, Naver will show up to three power content ads above or below (depending on user feedback) the ‘power link’ section on top of its universal search results. If the beta testing phase proves to be a success, Naver announced that it will expand the types of businesses at a later stage.

Below are two screenshots for the desktop and mobile versions to get a better understanding of this new ad format. The ads consist of image, headline, description, display URL, blog name, and date.

Companies who want to take part in this beta testing have to apply. They will be chosen by Naver based on the quality and popularity of their blogs; it is probably also based on their relationship with Naver. Originally, Naver set the beta test phase to four weeks between November 20 and December 18, 2014; however, it recently announced a delay with regards to the new starting date of the beta test phase. The beta test phase will now commence on December 11, 2014.

Even though Naver promises to only show high-quality blog posts by manually reviewing the blogs and blog posts which are applying for this new ad format; it is clear that the main goal is to generate another source of revenue. Users are understandably worried that the quality of search results will suffer: after all, it is not quality but the highest bid that will ultimately decide which blog article appears on the top. Even though the blog posts are clearly indicated as ads, it will have a major impact on the presentation of the SERPs moving forward.

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On September 1^st Naver introduced a complete overhaul of its search interface and published an official blog post about this major redesign a few days later. It is the first redesign in four years and the major change that stands out the most is the two column SERP (previously three) with the search tools now positioned at the top of the results page.

This change is almost an exact copy of Google’s SERP redesign exactly two years ago in 2012. Two months later, in December 2012, Google also introduced its knowledge graph. Now, almost two years later, Naver follows suit with a very similar feature. In addition to the regular search results in the middle, related information is now shown in the column to the right, at the same position where Google places its knowledge graph. 

One example is shown below when searching for the popularity of a current Korean movie. Besides the direct answer, which can be found in a more distinctive area at the top, one can also find additional information about the movie’s background and the actors on the right.

For Google users, this doesn’t look that groundbreaking, as it seems to be a simple copy of Google’s knowledge graph algorithm.

Google usually uses multiple sources for its movie knowledge graph, such as IMDb, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes and its own search database. For the movie example above, Naver seems to pull the data from its own movie database under http://movie.naver.com/.

Example 2 with Baseball Club

Naver explains these change by saying that in the past, people were just looking for simple text results, but nowadays a lot of background and connected information are expected to show up. As shown above, and something which Google users are also familiar with, Naver created different kinds of SERPs depending on the keyword category and based on the historical search behavior data, as explained in the next paragraph.

Together with the new design, Naver has also placed considerable emphasis on the implementation and ongoing development of its latest algorithm updates to constantly improve the search results. The main focus here is to understand the search intent by analyzing the previous searches and to deliver the right answer with only one search instead of multiple follow up searches. We covered the basics and functions of this new Naver algorithm in a previous post. Naver also emphasizes the integration of time and place factors in its search results, calling it ‘LTPS (Localized-Temporal Personalization System)’. This algorithm is mainly used for searches related to weather, traffic or when looking for places nearby, such as restaurants or shopping malls (more about this algorithm can be found here).

User responses are mixed, as reported by local news sites such as ‘Business Today’. The main complaint coming from users is that they feel confused by the new interface and want to use the old version. Currently, this is still possible through the button right next to the search field (screenshot below).

However, a representative of Naver stated that this button will only be available temporarily to help users through the transition.

Even though Google Korea initially adapted to the Korean market by copying Naver’s grouped universal search results page (screenshot below), it seems that, this time, it is Naver who bluntly copied Google’s search tool (from the left to the top) and knowledge graph (on the right) regarding their positions, design and functions.

 

 

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One of the biggest news on the Internet recently was Yahoo’s announcement of closing down its famous directory, after operating it for almost 20 years, by the end of 2014. But how does this affect Yahoo Japan, which is not majority-owned (35% to be exact) by Yahoo.com?

After scanning Yahoo Japan’s official blogs as well as other local search engine forums, Yahoo Japan seems to be unaffected by this decision made in the US. In fact, not only is Yahoo Japan’s directory being constantly improved and updated; it is even expanding its paid services for advertisers on ‘Business Express’, the platform accommodating all advertising related matters within the Yahoo Japan directory.

The standard annual fee for a listing in the Yahoo Japan directory is JPY 50,000 (around USD 470), and therefore quite a bit more expensive than the English equivalent. Besides the standard commercial listings, Business Express just launched another way of getting more exposure in the directory of the most popular search engine in Japan.

The new ad format is called ‘Hot Site’ and the website will appear in the bottom right-hand corner with a headline and a description, as illustrated in the screenshot below.

According to J.P. Morgan, Yahoo Japan is unlikely to see earnings growth in fiscal year 2015 due to slowing growth expectations for paid search advertisements which account for over a third of the company’s total sales. In light of this, the introduction of the new ad format might be an indication that Yahoo is trying to expand its income channels. The price for it is JPY 40,000 (around USD 375) for one year (product description below).

These ads won’t appear on Yahoo’s web search results, and only sites already submitted to the directory are eligible for this new ad format.

On top of the paid version, Yahoo Japan Directory has been working on other new functions as well. The most recent among them was released mid-September and is called ‘popular sites’, a new section at the bottom part of all sub-category page levels (screenshot below).

According to Yahoo Japan, people were complaining that it was hard to find high quality sites in the wide selection of categories and sub-categories. This new feature is supposed to solve the struggle of finding the best pages in each category by showing the best selection within a single glance. As Yahoo stated in its official blog, the appearance of this section is based on the popularity of the websites that it is based on.

This new feature is currently only available for the desktop version of the Yahoo Japan directory. It is still uncertain whether these efforts to attract more advertisers as well as users will bear fruit. Links on Yahoo directory are only 302 redirected backlinks, so the PR impact is almost non-existent, and case studies show that referral traffic coming from the directory is very little as well.

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In the past few months we have already mentioned several incidents of Japanese link networks being either penalized by Google or closed down entirely.The directories of the high authority site Sankei (offline now), previously to be found under http://dir.sankei.co.jp/ and named “Sankei LPO” and “Sankei Directory”, are now offline. Most likely due to a penalty or at least a warning by Google, the directories have started unfollowing all their outgoing backlinks at the beginning of September and completely shut down their services by the end of September.

Until then it was possible to acquire paid links which were then placed on one of the high authority partner websites, such as Iza.ne.jp (offline) or Sanspo.com (PR 7). The price per submission was JPY 42,000 (around USD 395). Links were followed and spread among one of the eight partner websites.

Another link directory network that was closed down in September is BPN, which previously could be found under http://bpn-dir.jp/ but is now offline as well. Similar to the directory above, BPN offered paid links which were then published on strong partner publishing sites like CNN or Reuters Japan. The price per submission was JPY 84,000 (around USD 790) and links were followed.

It seems that Google Japan is aggressively moving in on the paid directory link networks and it will only be a matter of time until all other remaining players will give in as well. There are still some players left in the market, such as i-Directory, s-Directory or Xlistings. However, other directories, such as Sasou Directory, already stopped accepting any new link submissions.

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Similar to its US counterpart, Google AdWords Japan now offers its clients the latest updates in real time, and it has now been two months since it has become possible for clients to access the AdWords Japan team through Twitter.Google AdWords Japan entered the world of Twitter in June this year, almost five years after AdWords US

The number of fans also reflect this, with around 700 for the Japanese account, versus 236,000 for the US account by the end of August 2014.Just like for the US account, Google actively invites users to ask questions regarding any topic. In the screenshot below, Google even offers an example question (here: “What should I do if another advertiser is using my company name in his/her ads?”) and includes an exemplar answer.

Google Japan has announced the launch of its Twitter account in its official AdWords blog and it also introduced the team which would be behind the account. Considering the popularity of Twitter in Japan and the currently low number of followers, Google evidently hasn’t put too much effort into promoting its new microblogging account yet. However, that may change very soon once the word is out.

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