Introduction to Yahoo! Japan SEO

What is Yahoo! Japan

We all know that Google reigns supreme in terms of SEO. While this may be true in the West, it is not always the case in Japan.

Yahoo! JAPAN is the most popular online portal in Japan, accounting for 20% of the search engine market. It offers over 100 services, including Yahoo! News, Shopping, Finance, and credit card services, which are utilized by millions of Japanese people. As a result, it's absolutely worth giving Yahoo! JAPAN SEO a try to improve your internet visibility in the Japanese market. JAPAN's market share, some marketers still see Yahoo! JAPAN as an afterthought, testing it only after Google perform well in Japan. However, this may not be the greatest method for entering the Japanese market.

In this article, you will explore Yahoo! Japan's properties and their characteristics from an SEO perspective.

SERP features on Yahoo! Japan

Landing page format

Yahoo! Japan, unlike Google, employs a classic web gateway architecture that allows visitors to quickly access a wide range of content.

Japan's most popular websites, like Rakuten and DMM, have a similar style. This style is popular among Japanese consumers, therefore the Yahoo! Japan platform includes shopping, online games, auctions, finance, and a variety of other categories that deliver current and popular information.

Internal vertical search result

Yahoo! Japan’s Properties: Yahoo! Chiebukuro, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Loco, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! News, and Yahoo! Auctions. Each of these platforms offers unique characteristics that give consumers meets their search intent.

Yahoo! Chiebukuro

Yahoo! Chiebukuro, like Quora and Naver Knowledge iN, is a question-and-answer (Q&A) platform where you may engage with other users by asking and answering a variety of topics.

As of January 2017, there were over 500 million Q&A pages, making it one of Japan's most popular knowledge and community sites. Although Yahoo! Japan has not released its ranking determinants, pages with "Chiebukuro" domains are frequently shown when typing long-tail searches (particularly in question form).

The search query in this example is "Tokyo" As you can see, the terms used for the search are highlighted in bold to underline their relevance to the indexed Q&A pages.

And many of the posts featured in the search results are from high-quality account users. This means that the higher your profile score, the more likely your content will appear in search results. Activity data is calculated using the number and quality of the Q&A.

In certain cases, despite a low-quality score, a page appears in search results because of numerous responses and views in a thread. Furthermore, recent publication dates are thought to be a good indicator that Yahoo! Japan may take up your landing pages.

To enhance your quality score, you must adhere to Chiebukuro's quality requirements, which include answering questions in other users' posts and producing quality threads to communicate with other users.

Yahoo! Shopping

Yahoo! Shopping is an online shopping service that offers products from a range of retailers and independent sellers. You may sell stuff at any price and buy items at any moment, just like on Amazon and eBay. This vertical search result has two elements that take people from the SERP to the Yahoo! Shopping platform.

Generic keywords

When a user enters generic terms into a search query, product categories are frequently shown as vertical search results. They, like site links in Yahoo! AdWords and Quicklinks in Yahoo! Promotional Ads (paid search platforms), let users find what they're seeking for more easily. For example, when a user searches for "bags" on Yahoo! Japan, the SERP feature reveals the types, targets, brand names, and attributes of each bag.

Descriptive keywords

Yahoo! Shopping offers 10 popular goods being offered on the marketplace when descriptive and more precise keywords such as "shoulder bags" are used in search inquiries. It persuades readers to click the link by presenting the product's image, price, features, and ratings.

Because Yahoo! Shopping's ranking is determined by its own algorithm, there is nothing you can do to improve your product's organic visibility on the SERP. According to Yahoo! Shopping, the ranking component is based on each customer's product demand and purchase history, as well as the sales advertising efforts incurred by retailers. So, running a sponsored ad named can help your goods appear at the top of the page and on the SERP feature.

It exclusively focuses on the Yahoo! Shopping site, where you may bid on product-related keywords. This can help your product rank higher for specific keywords, increasing its chances of appearing in Yahoo! Japan's vertical search results.

Clicking on the product's link in this feature will take you to a special landing page about the product on Yahoo! Shopping.

Yahoo! Loco + Yahoo! Maps

Yahoo! Loco is a regional information website that integrates with Yahoo! Maps to provide users with location-specific information. Similar to Google Maps vertical search results, the function presents popular sites or services in a nearby or precise area based on the search queries.

To get your company listed on Yahoo! Loco, first register for a Yahoo! Japan ID. In addition, if you run a restaurant or a café, enrolling with Yahoo! Dining may help you enhance your vertical search ranks.

Yahoo! News

Google Japan offers recent top articles mostly from reputable online news sources including Nikkei, Sankei, and NHK. Yahoo! News does not include external sources in its vertical news search results. Instead, the search engine promotes its news items through its own source, Yahoo! News.

Additionally, the terms specified in the trend are shown at the top. This allows you to investigate Japanese keyword trends. This results in a significant rise in traffic and page views inside Yahoo! Japan's domain.

Yahoo! Auction

Yahoo! Auction is an online auction service that allows users to sell or purchase products by bidding. It is Japan's most popular auction service, with over 50 million goods listed as of December 2017. Like Yahoo! Chiebukuro, there are several ranking elements to consider. To appear in the vertical search results, your product must have numerous bidders and a good rating on the user profile. It also helps if the last bidding date is close (within 5 days).

External vertical search result

Real-time search

Yahoo! Japan has also launched a real-time search service that shows postings from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This particular algorithm is exclusively utilized on Yahoo! Japan. It began with simply Twitter in 2011, but with a huge surge on Facebook and Instagram users, the firm released an upgrade for all three social media networks.

To appear on this platform, a social media post must be set as public so that Yahoo! algorithms may crawl and index it. Here are some conditions that must be met:

• Tweets must be in Japanese.
• Instagram profiles must be popular, with at least thousands of followers.
• Facebook accounts must be marked as "public."

Conclusion

Yahoo! Japan's regular improvements on internal and external vertical search result features may account for its success in Japan. The search engine provides a great user experience by producing a diversity of material across both internal and external platforms. These successful vertical search results provide visitors faster access to the information they are looking for.