History of Search Engines in Japan

Part of the reasons for Yahoo! Japan's dominance in Japan lies in the history.

1995
Several search engines were developed by college students in Japan and used by the public.

1996
Yahoo! Japan was established by Tokyo-based Softbank and Yahoo Corporation and started their search service in the Japanese language. Yahoo! Japan's search service was based on what they called "category search" in which website owners registered their websites and Yahoo! Japan's human editors manually constructed a directory. With the advantage of ample resource to operate this labor-intensive system, Yahoo! Japan gained the number one search service position in no time. In the early years Yahoo! Japan awarded an icon of red glasses to websites as their editor's choice and it was prestigious to receive this icon next to the listing of your website.

1997
Due to an explosive increase in the number of websites, "category search" system started to fall behind. In contrast, robot or crawler based search engines such as Infoseek and goo started to gain popularity.

1998
Yahoo! Japan formed a partnership with goo, a search engine operated by NTT Resonant, a 100% subsidiary of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation). If a search at Yahoo! Japan yielded no result in its manually constructed directory, goo would take over as a default search provider and display its results within Yahoo! Japan's result page.

2000
Google introduced their service in Japanese language and quickly gained popularity. Google is characterized by its clean, simple interface and its focus on search service while Yahoo! Japan aimed to be an overall portal.

2001
Yahoo! Japan switched its default search provider from goo to Google.

2004
Yahoo! Japan terminated its partnership with Google Japan. Toshikazu Inoue, VP Search, Yahoo! Japan explains the reason for this decision on his blog as follows. "The reason is simple. Search engine is an important business that is highly profitable. We shouldn't rely on another company's technology for our core business." Search engine is profitable - that is the fact that Google proved with Adwords, a pay-per-click advertisement program. In May, Yahoo! Japan started developing Yahoo Search Technology (YST).

2005
In October 2005, after spending over a year in adjusting and refining Yahoo Search Technology (YST) developed by Yahoo Cooperation to handle Japanese language and running it as a beta program, Yahoo! Japan placed YST as its main search technology. The old directory system was incorporated into the new technology. A website that is evaluated and registered to Yahoo! Japan by its human editors receives an icon and some weight in YST's algorithm that determines the ranking of the website.

2006
Prior to October 2005, the heavy Internet users in the country tended to prefer Google Japan over Yahoo! Japan but that might be changing this year. Some of the most advanced Internet users are now using both Yahoo! Japan and Google Japan depending on the type of their search. A Japanese search engine watcher, Kensaku Engine Mania (Kensaku means "search" in Japanese) reports that in a search accuracy test it conducted Yahoo! Japan scored higher than Google Japan.

References (all written in Japanese language):

Did You Know?
In Japan, fiscal year for practically all businesses and government offices starts on April 1 and ends on March 31. School year starts in April as well.