Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Portal site vs search site

    I usually use Yahoo Japan not Google Japan. I was surprised that most of American uses Google usually and not use Yahoo. From the lecture, I learned it depends on the country. Some of countries, including Japan, use another site, not Google because of the culture and the internet history in each country.

     According to some articles, top-ranking websites for a ton of countries to compare rankings between Yahoo’s and Google’s websites are as below. Here is where Yahoo still gets more traffic than Google:
    Japan – In Japan, the localized version of Yahoo, Yahoo.co.jp, is ranked as number one in the country, followed by Google’s localized Google.co.jp in second place. Yahoo is big in Japan. To get an idea of how big, check out the chart a bit further down.
The Philippines – In the Philippines, Yahoo.com is ranked in second place (after Facebook) and is followed by Google.com.ph in third place.
    Taiwan – In Taiwan, Yahoo.com is ranked number one, with Google.com.tw showing up in fourth place.
    Hong Kong – In Hong Kong, Yahoo.com is ranked number one, with Google.com.hk in third place.

     I believe Google is a kind of just search tool but Yahoo can provide us with a lot of information at the same time. Why do Americans like Google? Does Google provide us with more information or accurate search result? I definitely cannot tell the difference between search result of Yahoo and of Google.

     Generally, I need trend information and news at the same time when I search something or I just need this kind of information. Sometimes I can get interesting story and news from the top page of Yahoo unintentionally. Since I use Yahoo every time and every day regardless of using search engine or not, I’m now used to see Yahoo not Google and seldom use Google.


     Also, I think internet history is a key factor of this. In Japan, Yahoo JAPAN launched and advertised frequently from the begging of internet era, so that Japanese people began to use Yahoo JAPAN and it seems difficult for another competitor to win Yahoo. When you do marketing internationally, you need to take care of the culture and history.

No comments: