When you think about SEO in Japan market, you also have to know about search engines in Japan. They have some local search engines. I will introduce a share of Japanese search engine market for your SEO strategy.
Search engine share’s difference between the United States and Japan
This image shows the search engine market share of the United States in April 2016.
Search engine market share in the United States 2016 | Statistic
Google gets the top share (63.8%). The second one is the Bing (21.6%) and the third one is Yahoo (12.2%). This graph means you have to think about these three search engines for your personas.
Following image is the graph of the Japanese search engine’s market share in June 2016.
How do you feel this result? It’s different from the result of the U.S one. Google also ranks first (62.17%). Yahoo Japan is the second (31.9%). Bing is the third (5.3%). Others have the rest (4%). You might think that Yahoo Japan’s share is very high and Google is low. But Yahoo Japan uses Google’s search engine and Google + Yahoo Japan’s search engine market share is more than 94%.
【2016年版】最新の検索エンジンシェア｜日本＆世界の比較ランキング（in Japanese）
SEO in Japan, focus on the Google SEO
This means that you should focus on Google for your Japanese SEO. If you optimize SEO for Google, you can also cover your SEO in Yahoo Japan.
If you want to reach senior citizen, you might deal with Bing and some local search engine (goo, docomo) somewhat. But you should not take care of them too much, just focus on Google Japan.
Deal with Google and Yahoo Japan for PPC and display ads
But if you think to use PPC and display ads in Japan market, you have to deal with Google and Yahoo. Yahoo Japan uses Google’s search engine but it has own advertisement system. When you think about digital ads (PPC and display) strategy, you should make a plan for both Google and Yahoo Japan.
Google tends to be used by young, male, business and smartphone users. Yahoo Japan is used by older, female, non-business, laptop and desktop users.
