Yahoo Japan still dominates the search market but Google is not really far behind. Google Japan has been playing catchup & will carve it’s own niche in future markets especially Youtube, DSP, & Android technology. One problem for Google Japan was that it was often seen in Japan as a non Customer Support company but this year even by visiting the Google office myself I saw they are stepping up adding staff to help smaller companies. This is vital for Japan because Yahoo! Japan has had sales teams coordinating with smaller companies for years. I think this may have been the inspiration for them to launch the みんなのビジネスオンライン service that I discovered by accident.

The New platform will of course have a few changes such as

• 4 match types instead of 2
• Account daily spending cap will be eliminated
• For mobile you may not target each carrier individually.
• Agencies will have one login for all accounts.
• Yahoo’s Keyword Suggestion Tool will be updated to include mobile stats

Yahoo! Japan will try to make the migration as simple as possible & will alert customers if there are any issues. Expect not to be able to upload new campaigns, keywords, or copy for about two weeks during the migration.

Here’s screenshots from Google’s new service. This was the only page I was able to access.
The site will be at www.minbiz.jp which seems to be coming soon but for some reason it was actually fully indexed by Google.

Looks like a good campaign site targeting small business’ in Japan. As someone who runs paid search for clients if Google extends service & support to smaller business in Japan they can increase revenue. Looking forward to the launch.

****** Update Google has pulled the site completely.
I guess they are only human & didn’t realize their own search engine quickly indexed & cached the site because of the sitemap.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:novjNJdADOQJ:www.minbiz.jp/success-story/207269+%22%E3%81%BF%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%AE%E3%83%93%E3%82%B8%E3%83%8D%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%22&cd=4&hl=ja&ct=clnk&gl=jp

One of the greatest change to the appplication is now it allows you to input IDN Domains for the Display URL. If you are unfamiliar with IDN Domains it’s internationalized domain names in native language.

I haven’t tested extensively but I think domains like

海外ホテル.com (international Hotel)
should command a higher CTR which should increase actual conversions to client’s sites.

You still have to comply with Google Adwords policy & the domain & the landing page must match. Some of my clients are testing & using IDN domains based on research I’ve provide for SEO throughout the last 5 years. Now clients will be able to test campaign sites with IDN domains that cater to a specific target. The display URL can be native Japan, Chinese, Russian, Arabic etc but the destination URL must use the punycode version.

Looking forward to seeing good results from this Google, thanx for this.

Perhaps the service will be similar to the US campaign Get Your Business Online. Google has been ramping up staff lately in their still new office in Roppongi Hills. We have no feedback yet on how the GYBO went in the States or other countries.

For users that are searching for new info it’s great to see that the article was written this month or last month, instead of an article that was written about two or more years ago.

Good going Google as I update this site more hoping to see how these changes affect my search referals.

Here’s a screenshot.

Google Adds timestamp

Who said the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool was dead?

Yahoo’s Japan’s Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool has stopped updating stats finally it seems. Now I know quite a few of you are thinking this must be an old post or something that was just reposted from 2007. No it’s currently 2011 & Obama is the president of the USA. There has been actually several Keyword Suggestion Tools since the public & overused Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool vanished around 2007 but it seems no one writes about them.

The old Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool was pretty much a staple for too many marketing tools. If the tools were used for advertising that would have been fine but many of the softwares using the tool wasn’t geared towards paid search. It was used as an SEO tool and also benchmarks for domain stats.

In 2007 Yahoo launched the first new Keyword Suggestion Tool as they promised when they shut down the old one. Everyone was happy to hear that, business as usual right? Wrong. The first tool was agency only. Each person who used it had their own individual logins. Also there was never any press release on it. Agencies used it & kept quiet. Why not? This is the tool that finally is not being updated anymore.

So I know you’re wonder how do agencies get their data now? Well that tool to us was “So last year”. We already have a new tool by Yahoo! Japan. This tool also is schedule to be updated tremendously in Fall 2011. You want to know more about this tool?

Keep reading InternationalSEM.com from time to time I’ll tell you all about it.

Many of us are onlookers as the US Dollar is steadily decreasing in value. Even though many who read this blog reside in countries that have a primary currency other than the US dollar many of our readers have global clients that do allocate budgets in dollar.

The Dollar Yen value

With the fluctuation between currencies on the outside it looks simple. You get a budget in Dollar, you agree on an exchange rate & you bill the client that amount. Seems simple, but it’s not.

4 years ago the fluctuations started to cause concerns for us in Tokyo. The yen has steadily grown stronger & stronger in value. Using an example of how the fluctuation works we’ll look at a client that sets budgets quarterly & likes to pay quarterly also.

Let’s say that client allocates a $500,000 budget to us in May 2007 that comes to 58.8 million yen media buying power. In June the exchange rate makes that 61 Million yen buying power. The problem is by the time the client pays in August, $500,000 becomes 57.9 million yen almost one million yen less than we began.

Other than budgets there are issues concerning at performance when the client’s KPIs are set in dollar. That campaign that you finally got the CPA to be aligned to your client’s goals just increased the CPA because of the fluctuations.

What solutions can we take to resolve issues & retain transparency amongst our clients?

Here are a few solutions that work for me.

Multicurrency reporting: Give clients reports in 2 currencies. Dollar & the local buying currency. This is great for those quarter reviews when you look & see your CPA in yen has decreased a lot compared to the previous quarter even if the decrease looked minor in dollars.

3rd Party Tracking Tools: Tools like Zap Search, & Marin keep accurate daily exchange rates. I’m a big advocate of using tools like Marin or Zap search for conversion tracking & reporting. You & your clients can see historic data that the currency can be changed on the fly.

Clients Pay in Advance: Make your clients pay the monthly budget or quarterly budget in advance to avoid confusion.

So there we have it. If you have any other solutions feel free to comment.
BTW one of the solutions is a joke :-p

I can understand the direction Google went with this in terms of quality assurance. For example
You see an ad with a display URL of www.PayPaI.com at quick gland it looks like Paypal but it isn’t it’s paypai.

Tonight I was a bit supprised going through my Gmail where the ads certainly come from Google’s Display Network.

There I saw it a white unicorn. Grazing on the side of my inbox. Just like most people who saw bigfoot by mistake I didn’t take a screen picture & opened another email.

What I did do is remember what the ad was for & copied the ad text from the company’s organic listing & emailed it to myself.
Then we have the white unicorn again….
AN ALL UPPERCASE DISPLAY URL IN AN ADWORDS AD.
Now all I want to know is “how the heck did they do it????”

ALL Caps Adwords Display URL