In Korea, Naver is by far the largest and most widely used search engine, currently taking 75% of the search market, with Daum (14%) and Yahoo (4%) trailing behind. Two weeks ago, Naver went beyond its borders and relaunched its web portal in the Japanese market, for a second time. On January 31st, 2005 Naver officially stopped its service in Japan. It wasn`t mentioned as to why it pulled out, but the industry assumption was that it just wasn`t able to make a name for itself in the fiercely-competitive Japanese market, with Yahoo and Google combined accounting for over 85% of the search share.

What`s Unique About Naver in Japan?

Naver in Japan has been operating a closed beta version of its portal since June 15th, recruiting a group of around 5,000 local Japanese internet users to evaluate and test out the new service, which has received positive feedback to-date. Naver’s Japanese portal certainly has a much cleaner UI (user interface) than its Korean version. On the front page, hot search queries are placed prominently using flash showing current search themes. The use of flash is also carried through onto the search results pages mimicking a Windows Vista type style, which adds some nice visual impact. Key services from its top page are the usual web, image, video and blog search services, as well as a question-and-answer message board, and matome, (meaning “arranging” in Japanese), allowing users to edit their search results as well as create new pages dedicated to a certain topic, enabling users to add a variety of content, links, images, etc., which will then be exposed as search results. Kind of a blend of Wikipedia and search.

“Theme” is also a unique search method Naver is banking on, which shows related topics or categories associated with a certain keyword, allowing users to conduct searches focusing strictly on a specific category. For example, for a search term like “Manchester United”, Naver Theme search will give you “Soccer”, “Ronaldo”, “Sports”, “England”, “Person/Group”, “Game”, etc. Choose “Ronaldo”, and you naturally get Ronaldo-related searches; choose “Soccer”, and you`d get teams that may have a rivalry or special history with Manchester United.

Opportunities for Marketers in Japan? 

Currently Naver is not offering any form of paid listings, but once their beta program closes and they officially open to the general public in August, they may syndicate with Google as their primary ad server. From an SEO perspective however, there seems to be great opportunity to be visible, particularly with no sponsored ads blocking your view. Upon conducting a search query, the top results is typically one organic listing called “featured web”, followed by 10 organic “traditional web” listings, given solid opportunity to well SEO`d sites. Additionally, on the right column, a constant listing of related images remains present, showing between 6-10 images. If proper image optimization is done, this gives site owners added visibility.

In Summary

Naver has certainly done its job in properly localizing its portal to Japan tastes, through a nice blend of visual stimulation, social integration tools, and an easy-to-use interface. The key for their future success will be to properly promote Naver within Japan and continually innovating while also looking to see what the mobile implications are.

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