Japanese searches - space or no space?

[Edwin]

Does anyone have data to support spaces (or the lack thereof) between the keywords in a Japanese-language search. I'm not convinced the Overture data is "clean" enough to retain the actual spacing used in a search.

For example, if somebody searched for "green widget" (in Japanese) would they normally type greenwidget or green widget into the search engines?

[bill]

The standard way of separating keywords in all CJK searches is a space. This is a pattern that all Japanese SEs have used. However, that doesn't always mean that everyone is going to search that way. I've watched Japanese people in my office search and some of the less savvy among them will often type as they would into a word processor...get little or no results, and then proceed to add spaces.

[David_M]

I would say its about an 80/20 split in favor of no spaces. The overture data is also skewed with yahoo directory titles which have spaces.

[Edwin]

Thanks for the info - I've noticed very different results with/without spaces, so it's important to pick the right horse to back!