Japanese Google Adwords

The fun and frustration!

[whats up skip]

Over the last week or so, we have been running some Google Adwords in Japanese targeting Japanese in Japan looking for accommodation in Australia.

Now with the lower minimum bid price for Google Adwords in Japanese it has become viable for Australian businesses to use this type of advertising. Indeed the other day I saw four ads running (including one of ours) for the keyword "Melbourne" in Japanese.

We did however experience some real problems with Google Adwords system that may be due to the lower usage levels in Japanese or in key words relating to Australia. We had particular trouble with "Perth" (in Japanese)as a keyword. We were bidding at the lowest value we could, but were still receiving either position 1 or 2.

Now this is where the Adword system started to have a problem. After a couple of days the system stopped running the ad for "Perth" as it stated the conversion rate was too low. It suggested increasing the bid price. How would this help? We already had position 1 or 2 so the conversion rate would not improve. Sure if we were position 6 I would see the reasoning.

End result - we had to stop running the ad for Perth and Google looses out on a little bit of revenue. The real issue is the frustration with a system that cannot cope with low levels of compitition and conversion rates. Oh, if you are think it was the way the ad was drafted, think again. The conversion rates for the other key cities were very high.

Another issue with the Adwords system in Japanese revolved around the Google servers that would show the ads. We had selected any searches in Japanese from any location, however our ads and others did not show for searches using Google.com.au only Google.co.jp. A real problem if you want to target Japanese living in or visiting Australia!

[bill]

skip I have not had luck running AdWords purely at the minimum bid level in any language. I think that for certain terms the competition can and will outspend you and effectively drive you off certain keywords. In a lot of cases if you can't increase your bid you're out. It's not in Google's interest to allow everyone to stay at the minimum.

We had selected any searches in Japanese from any location, however our ads and others did not show for searches using Google.com.au only Google.co.jp. A real problem if you want to target Japanese living in or visiting Australia!

I don't know if that's as big a problem as you might think. I've worked with a number of Japanese who have lived and worked abroad, and the one's that use Google inevitably use the .co.jp version. If Google is indeed not showing your ad in other local Googles, then you're still only missing a tiny percentage of Japanese visitors. Regardless, that's not the way it's advertised to work so I could see how frustrating it could be.

[lukasz]

Whats up skip - I really can`t see how lack of competition may affect your conversion rate (CTR). Increasing the price of course wouldn`t help.

Think twice what you wish for. One month ago I started a campaign for particular keyword and 7Yen gave me second position, today with 15yen bid I am lucky to get 6th spot.

Coming back to your problem, it is possible that people searching for Perth are less interested in accomodation, than people searching for Sydney or Melbourne and that would explain lower CTR. IMO people visiting Perth are more likely to go there on organised tour. Try with another ad.

Thanks for mentioning the other issue(ads not showing in AU), I have similar settings and I couldn`t figure out why I am not getting any traffic from Australia although I am getting some from US and Europe. Maybe we should send AdWords an email?

[Troppo]

Skip, Are you also bidding on the English search term. It's not uncommon for Asian searchers to input an English query where the term is reasonably well known and familiar. Perth is a short word and might lend itself to that usage while Melbourne is more of a stretch.

If you are either already doing this or decide to do so, make sure to limit the campaign countries to Japan only or the result of an English query might default to your English ad as it does for Korean language ads in Korea.

[whats up skip]

Perth has a higher search frequency than Melbourne so there is no real need to try to capture the English language searches from the Japanese. This would be a very small component.

Below is a report we released on the relative search frequency of Australian destinations (in Japanese).

Position Destination Relative Strength
1 Cairns 100
2 Perth 38
3 Gold Coast 34
4 Sydney 33
5 Ayers Rock 24
6 Melbourne 24
7 Great Barrier Reef 14
8 Brisbane 13
9 Darwin 10
10 Tasmania 9
11 Green Island 7
12 Hamilton Island 7
13 Adelaide 5
14 Fitzroy Island 2
15 Byron Bay 1

[lukasz]

I've worked with a number of Japanese who have lived and worked abroad, and the one's that use Google inevitably use the .co.jp version. If Google is indeed not showing your ad in other local Googles, then you're still only missing a tiny percentage of Japanese visitors.

Bill in case of my Japanese page, the proportion of people coming from google.co.jp to people coming from google.com is 9 to 6.

[bill]

Is that in terms of Japanese language queries on AdWords?

[lukasz]

Yes, Japanese language queries on google without partner sites

[David_M]

I've had a similar problem with Japanese adwords
Last message
[webmasterworld.com]

[whats up skip]

MORE FUN & GAMES

Now Google Adwords is dropping ads if the keyword is being searched less than 1,000 per day.

Problem: Google Japan is not as popular as Yahoo! Japan so keywords like Melbourne and Brisbane in Japanese are not receiving over 1,000 searches per day. Thus you cannot advertise to this key market directly!

[David_M]

I'm wondering if a temporary fix to this problem is to create a new campaign with the * keyword.

This seemed to work for a keyword of mine that was *. It has been running syndicated for a couple of months now.