How Japanese search the web

[stephenmunday]

In the US, Google and Yahoo search engines are the way about 90% of Internet users find information. In Japan, it is the Yahoo directory that fills that role.

I have been wondering why that is.... I have a theory about how in English there is usually one way to spell a keyword for a search (or maybe two ways if you count US and UK English spelling variations.) In Japanese there are so many different possibilities. For example, if I hear about a company called "Sanyo", I could search for 山陽、三陽、さんよう、サンヨウ、Sanyo or Sanyou.

I am particularly interested in the experience of Japanese users and why they personally prefer the directory format to the search engine format that is so prevalent in English-speaking countries.

 

[PaulTB]

Hmm, is 'consul' a new 和製英語 ? ;-)

[Edit] Anyway on to your question. Could it just be a matter of scale?

At a very rough guess there are at least 10 times as many English webpages as Japanese pages. Relative efficiency of directories vs. search engines probably drops off as numbers increase.

 

[m477]

Hmm, it seems like most Japanese I speak to use Google. In fact, they even use the word ??? as a verb.

Also, I'd guess that using META tags for search keys is even more important in Japanese for helping people be able to find your web page.


Edit: the Japanese text isn't coming out properly for some reason on this computer. That's supposed to read GU-GU-RU in kana.

 

[mdchachi]

Where did you get that statistic from? Are you sure the 90% doesn't include people who use Yahoo's search engine?

 

[Maciamo]

The most popular Search Engines in Japan are mostly Internet Service Providers. From their Alexa ranking, here is the order of popularity :

1) Yahoo
2) Google
3) Infoseek
4) Msn
5) Goo
6) Nifty
7) Excite
8) Bigloble
9) Hi-ho
10) Dion

Regarding the encoding used for the search, it is usually in kanji and there is only one kanji possible for what you are looking for (sanyo has only one combination of kanji, otheriwse it's another company). Companies like Sanyo or Toshiba could be written in romaji in the same way as on their logo (so not "sanyou").

 

[stephenmunday]

Thanks for your ideas everyone. The relative efficiency of searching using directories v. search engines is a reasonable on.

I understand M477's point that most people use Google. If I took a sample of people in my office, that would be true, as most of them are programmers and use Google all the time to look up particular error code numbers etc. However, from statistics I have seen concerning the number of searches performed (rather than the relative popularity of pages) it would seem that the majority of regular users use Yahoo.

Finally on Maciamo's point, I agree that if you know the company's kanji you can find them easily with a search. My point is that what if you have only heard a coporate name (or indeed location) in passing and have no idea what characters it is written with? What do you type into Google then? That is why I have to agree with M477's point about adding meta-tags with as many potential variations as possible to help searchers out in this situation.

What do the Japanese members think? What is your preferred search method in English and Japanese? Do you use the same or different methods?