FAQ

Q: What search engines are most used in Japan?
Yahoo! Japan is number 1. Google Japan is number 2. Figures on their market share found on the net vary, but they fall in the ranges of 60 to 80% for Yahoo! Japan and 10 to 30% for Google Japan. Microsoft's MSN is usually sited as the distant number 3 with 3 to 8% of the share.

One of the reasons for Yahoo! Japan's popularity is its well-branded name recognition and its position as a portal website that offers a wide range of additional services in addition to search, including shopping, auction and blog hosting. While Google Japan tends to be favored by the heavy Internet users, Yahoo! Japan seems to appeal to a wider range of population in the country.

Yahoo! Japan has its own search technology called YST. Thus SEO for Japanese website means SEO for Yahoo! Japan's YST first, then for Google's algorithm.

Furthermore, Yahoo! Japan's YST is not just a translated version of YST developed by Yahoo! U.S. mainly because Yahoo! Japan's larget shareholder is Tokyo-based Softbank, not Yahoo! U.S. A summanry of historical development of Japanese search engines is posted for your reference.

Q: I have my website translated to Japanese. What do I do next?
Here is a list of things we recommend to do.
  1. Check the quality of the Japanese translation and make sure the right keywords are used
  2. Evaluate if you need or want to do further SEO work
  3. Submit your website to Google Japan
  4. Submit your website to Yahoo! Japan (optional)
  5. Conduct a test Pay-Per-Click campaign
Q: How do I check the quality of the Japanese translation and make sure correct keywords are used?
What you need is someone qualified to do the work for you, and the qualifications are:
  • Ability to write Japanese at professional copy writing level
  • Ability to look around on the net to familiarize oneself, learn the terminology specific to the type of business, and figure out the most important keywords for the website.
If you don't find a qualified person around you, we can do it for you.
Q: How do I evaluate if I need to do further SEO work?
Let us do it for you. We can analyze your Japanese website and present a report and recommendation to you. But here is a quick check you can do. Look at the HTML code of your Japanese website and see if a title tag (<title>) and a meta description tag (<meta name="description" …>) are there and written in Japanese. If you don't find them, your Japanese site needs some SEO work.
Q: How do I submit my website to Google Japan?
It's simple. Once your website has sections written in Japanese, all you need to do is simply submit your URL at Google Japan's website submission page.
Q: How do I submit my website to Yahoo! Japan?
Unlike Google, Yahoo! Japan does not provide a simple submission form. If Yahoo! Japan’s crawler finds your website (or pages containing Japanese text), it will index it. However, this will probably require two or three months after your Japanese pages have been uploaded to the Internet.
Q: What is Yahoo! Japan’s “Business Express”?
In the beginning, Yahoo! Japan was a manually comprised collection of websites that you could search among and view. It has since become an automatic search system that is similar to Google, although it still carries a “registered websites” layer beneath the new system.

When a website has been successfully registered at Yahoo! Japan, it has been checked and approved by human editors at Yahoo! Japan and given the status of a registered website at Yahoo! Japan. This search engine provides an option of searching only among the registered websites, just like other options, such as searching only for images, news and maps. If your website is registered and included in this database, there will be an extra direct link from Yahoo! Japan to your website. Having this extra link is a good thing for SEO.

So how do you register your website? If your website is not commercial, you can simply complete the form. If your website is commercial, you are required to pay the application fee and go though the registration process called “Business Express”.

Q: How much is the Business Express fee?
  • 157,500 yen (about $1,450) if your website is about products and services that apply one of the categories listed below.
    • Porn-related products and services
    • Food and products that promote health
    • Products and services for skin care and hair care
    • Treatments to enhance personal appearance, including esthetic clinics and plastic surgery
    • Treatments to promote health, including acupuncture and manipulative, chiropractic and massage treatments
    • Private detective and other personal investigative services
    • Dating services
    • Gambling-related products and services
  • 52,500 yen (about $480) for all other websites.
  • The fee is payable only once. There is no annual fee or renewal fee.
Q: What are the pros and cons of paying for the Yahoo! Japan Business Express?
Pros
  • If your website is approved, it can show up on Yahoo! Japan in about a week.
  • Registered websites are ranked higher on Yahoo! Japan than otherwise.
Cons
  • The fee does not guarantee approval of your website for “registered sites” status. 95% is the current approval rate.
Q: Should I pay for the Business Express?
It is highly recommended. The fee is relatively reasonable when compared to the expense of print advertising.

However, if any of the statements below describe your goals or situation, you might want to decide against Business Express or postpone use of this option.

  • I don’t mind waiting for about 3 months or so.
  • I would rather pay Overture advertising for immediate inclusion in Yahoo! Japan’s search results.
Q: What are the "Business Express" guidelines?
The first thing that you are asked to do on the application form is to check off a list of guidelines. Here are some of the items that we think matters most to our prospective customers:
  • The website contains sufficient content to substantiate its site tile. Yahoo! Japan will decide what is sufficient content at its own discretion.
  • The website is written in Japanese or contains pages written Japanese.
  • The website lists the company's name, address, phone number and e-mail address clearly.
  • The website contains no section or part that has not been completed.
  • All links on the website are valid.
  • The website can be viewed with various, commonly used browsers in various versions.
  • The website contains no illegal or inappropriate content. What is inappropriate is decided by Yahoo! Japan at its discretion.
  • I understand that Yahoo! Japan does not guarantee the inclusion of my site even if my site meets all the conditions listed here.
Q: What are X recommend and JLISTING?
X recommend and JLISTING are website directories like dmoz that serve their data to their partner sites. Both charge registration application fees and the fees are higher for websites for certain categories of business including porn, gamble, plastic surgeries and health food.
Please contact us for more information.
Did You Know?
Sometimes people ask us how do the Japanese people use a keyboard to write Japanese on the computer or if they use a different keyboard. Most people in Japan use a regular English keyboard and some use a keyboard with Japanese characters. Using a regular English keyboard, you can type-in a word or words using alphabet and then change it to Japanese.