Yahoo Japan : Search Social Media
Yahoo Japan’s CNET Japan Search Engine Conference presentation seems to have a similar focus as Daniel Read’s Ask Jeeves review, addressing the history of Yahoo, the web as we knew it, and the new “Web 2.0 influenced” social search engine. Yahoo Japan puts an emphasis on their “My Media” product, which lets users control and select which parts of Yahoo and which media will be served to them during the Yahoo Japan experience : “sugoku private, everyone has their own preferences of the web, each person prefers information in a different ‘long tail’ fashion, and this is where Yahoo Social Media’s My Media is heading.”
Quick : Yahoo Japan is the Godzilla of search and portals. They are the top web destination in Japan and an innovator in localized search and media offerings. Yahoo sites such personal My Media experience as searching & the reading of personal search results, RSS feeds, news, groups, and locally influenced results – which bring an intimate experience for Yahoo Japan users.
Results may be served in Japanese, Chinese, Korean or English, depending on the user preferences and search terms. Yahoo Japan demos a site preview tool which its users can utilize to check out a foreign site before clicking over.
Like Yahoo US, Yahoo Japan also values its web category system and continues to integrate categorical listings and relevant category and search keyword suggestions based upon the original query. Such integration of relevant search results from the Yahoo Search Technology algorithm, categories, personalized info, sponsored results and image ads lend to a content filled results page, albeit cluttered.
Following the review of results was a rundown on Yahoo Japan’s Beta Yahoo Area Search, the Yahoo Japan Local Search, which is quite similar to Yahoo Local. Additionally, the presentation showcased Yahoo Mobile (quite advanced) and news search.
Chiebukuro is a Yahoo Channel for User Generated Content on Yahoo Japan, which again like its US counterpart, is taking full advantage of its member base and their opinions on shopping, auctions, and blog entries. And yes, Yahoo Japan offers a full service Blog Search.
Yahoo will be launching PSearch after new years, which looks to be the Yahoo Japan version of the Shoposphere or even Shopzilla, which will showcase an index based off of crawled web sites, Yahoo Shopping, and merchant feeds – bringing a total vertical comparison shopping experience to this magnificently consumer spending based economy.
Yahoo’s pyramid of search engine technology was also covered, showing a growing importance of social and personalized web results. US based Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 was used as an example to explain the growing personal search and tagging technologies and implementation into Yahoo Japan. Other US Yahoo offerings which will be expanded to the Yahoo Japan market also include the Yahoo Developer and Yahoo Publisher Networks, API’s, and and Small Publisher personalized publishing which may be referring to Flickr, as Yahoo already has a blog offering in Japan.
