Yahoo Japan has been providing the analytic tool for Geocities Plus (paid) Members since March 2009, and just announced that the tool is now available for free to all registered (Yahoo ID holders) users.
This easy to user tool has been improved by listening the feedback from users for the past several months, and they […]

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SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) Asia Tour and Seminars aim to foster awareness, educate, and promote the search industry in Asia by connecting professionals in the regions and Western markets, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.
The event consists of seminars, press conferences, and networking receptions at each location. […]

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Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released the latest Internet population data in Japan. According to the report, there were more than 90.9 million Internet users in Japan as of January 2009, which is 2.8 million more than the date from January 2008.
The data also shows there were 82.55 million Internet users from PC, […]

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According to comScore Japan’s access ranking report on entertainment sites for February 2009, 45.7 million Japanese visited entertainment sites during the month of February, which is about 74% of Internet users in Japan. (The data includes the accesses from PC at offices and homes, and doesn’t include the accesses from mobile, PDA, or PC accesses […]

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Chinese research company, iResearch, reported that Baidu had 73.2% search market share in 2008. (72.6% in 2007)
The top 3 engines in China in 2008 were Baidu, Google and Yahoo.

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On February 5, Google introduced its new top page with “Hot new keywords” below the search box. As I reported here before, Google in Asia (not only Japan but also Korea, China etc.) has added links with icon below the search box last year hoping to improve visitor’s experience at Google. Basically, Google realized that […]

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Yahoo Japan announced that they will discontinue Yahoo video-cast services after April 5, 2009. Starting February 16, 2009, they will no longer accept new video uploading through the service. All of the uploaded videos will be deleted on April 5, 2009.
They recommend their partner sites NicoNico Douga and Zoom for video uploading and distribution services.

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Even after mixi, gree, facebook and twitter, BBS sites are still popular in Japan. The biggest BBS site in Japan, “2ch” is where you can hear all the gossip about… just about everything you want to know.
There was a rumor back in late 2007 that the owner wanted to close the site. Instead, Hirouki Nishimura, […]

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According to China Internet Association, there are more than 50 million blogger in China as of November 2008. The number of blogs has reached 100 million.
There are 290 million Internet users in China right now.

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Friendfeed is now available in 6 new languages including Japanese and Chinese.
Friendfeed currently works with 59 services including Facebook, Fricker, YouTube and Twitter, and 1/3 of the users are already using it with languages other than English.
Facebook and Twitter already have Japanese version and gaining Japanese users, but mixi and Gree are definitely the largest […]

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Since we don’t have Thanksgiving holiday in Japan, we don’t have the Black Friday nor the Cyber Monday. But, on December 7 (OK, it was Sunday), Rakuten had the record sales of more than 3 billion yen in one day, which was 40% up from the same time last year. I guess Japanese market is […]

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ComScore, Inc. just announced top Japan website rankings for the month of October 2008. The ranking information is based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service.
The rankings of the largest and fastest growing Internet properties and site categories in Japan shows that Business/Finance sites saw visitation growth in October due to the […]

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Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced its plan to introduce Japanese Kanji character domain “.日本” or “.日本国” as early as Summer 2009.
Currently, Japanese characters can be used as “郵便局.jp”. There are about 1 million “.jp” domains registered and about 140,000 of them use Japanese characters.

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comScore, Inc. released a study of music related sites in Japan. It shows that nearly 40% of the Japanese online population visited an entertainment music site such as iTunes in the month of August in 2008.
The study also revealed that Japan recorded the highest penetration of users of Apple iTunes software during the month, […]

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comScore just released its August 2008 rankings of the largest and fastest-growing Internet properties and site categories in Japan, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. During a month of August, travel sites had much growth as many planned trips for vacation season. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China triggered gains […]

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On July 4th, Overture Japan launched its updated website with both Overture and Yahoo logos. URL is also changed from “overture.co.jp” to “ov.yahoo.co.jp”.
Last week, they announced the changes with minimum bidding cost, which is currently 9yen (35yen for some categories). Starting in August, the minimum bidding cost will be adjusted according to the importance & […]

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iPhone goes on sale on July 11 in Japan, and I heard that there was a short line (not long at all compared to the line forming in front of the Apple shop in New York city) forming in front of the store in Tokyo.
As you may know, Softbank won the contract for iPhone […]

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comScore just released an interesting data about the search rankings in Asia-Pacific region. According to their data, Google and Yahoo were the regional leaders as “top search properties” followed by China’s Baidu.
“Because Google and Yahoo! have a strong presence in many Asia-Pacific countries, they account for the majority of searches conducted in the […]

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The latest report on information gathering in Japan shows that Internet plays a big part in people’s information gathering and decision making process. 95% of 500 survey participants said that they use Internet to gather information prior to purchasing products and services. 89.6% of them use “search engines” and 59% of them use “products/services comparison […]

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