Japan - Google vs. Yahoo

[poster_boy]

Just launched a Japanese site & Japanese language SEM campaign a month ago. Across the same keywords, Google is outpacing Yahoo in clicks by 3x with a 2x higher conversion rate.

I read that Yahoo was the leader in Japan... if not, that it was certainly closer than what my data shows.

Anyone see similar or conflicting stats in their JP SEM campaigns?

[David_M]

Are your clicks from ads placed on the sites or organic results?
If organic- then perhaps your ranking is better in google and therefore creating more clicks?

I believe yahoo still has the majority of the market for search in Japan.

[bill]

I agree with David_M here. Organic Yahoo! Japan referrers well out-pace Google on the sites I monitor. That's not to say that PPC conversions for a certain market might not give better results on Google, but it may be a case of your site ranking better there to begin with. What sort of clicks are we talking about here?

[LifeinAsia]

Slightly off-topic, but what else is there in Japan? China's got Baidu, Korea's got Naver & Daum. What are the main home-grown search engines in Japan?

We're doing Google AdWords in Japanese and the Japanese version of our main site has a lot of links in Yahoo Japan (every time Yahoo News has an article about Korea's DMZ, they include a link to our site and the number of visitors skyrockets for several hours). But we'd like to know where else to target and diversify our efforts.

[poster_boy]

What sort of clicks are we talking about here?

sorry, I've neglected my own thread! Paid listings only. It's also been over a month and the same trend holds... any ideas?

[bill]

Well, in PPC Google was the early starter in Japan compared to Yahoo with AdSense in Japanese which may have a bit more groundswell compared to the Yahoo/Overture placement.

When you hear about Yahoo Japan being the leader this is true in terms of organic SERPs traffic. I've heard varying reports on PPC depending on a number of factors.

[poster_boy]

Thanks, bill. In my particular situation, I've opted out of the content network in both - so my findings are narrowed to each engine's respective search networks.

I've heard varying reports on PPC depending on a number of factors.

Can you speculate on the factors that these might be?

[bill]

There are obviously differences depending on the type of syndication you opt for.

More tech oriented and computer savvy campaigns often report good results from Google. You may be getting better results here because the Google crowd tend to research things more thoroughly.

Yahoo gets good marks from the portal crowd. The people who tend to stick within the confines of the Yahoo properties are a different type of surfer. You get a lot of housewives and retirees in this group.

I don't have hard data for these. This is just the general impression I get from hearing people talk about their campaigns. Does your experience with Google PPC fit into either of these generalities?