“Google, Yahoo and Bing have succeeded in world domination…                                                     …. Mwwahahaha!!”When you hear this statement, run away!

The world is dominated by local search engines and from an international online marketing point of view – this is important to understand. Google does cover a large portion of the world but markets like Asia are dominated by local search engines not the “global” players. So who are these local Asian search engines?

China

China is dominated by a search engine called “Baidu”. They own 60% of the search market in China and are still growing in strength. Recent developments, such as its decision to branch in Internet Television and a recent partnership with Bing, means that Baidu is going from strength to strength.
Its set up is very similar to Google, utilising PPC and organic listings to provide search results triggered by specific keywords. Placement is very similar also with PPC ads on the top and right hand side of the landscape (marked) and organic ads placed centrally.

Baidu has profited in this market due to many factors. It handles the Chinese language better than Google, providing more accurate results and also has the ability to perform multi-platform search (including music and videos). Baidu also passes government restrictions and the highly public fall out between Google and the Chinese government has only aided Baidu’s market dominance.

Japan

Japan’s major search engine – Yahoo JP – is an extremely confusing mix of global search engines mixing with local presence. Yahoo JP holds 56% of the search market but has recently undergone huge changes. The most notable is that Yahoo JP organic search is now powered by Google with Yahoo still holding a stake within the business(majority owned by Softbank).

However, whilst the organic search is powered by Google, pay-per-click is still provided by the original

Yahoo JP portal, which is not connected to the Yahoo world network.  PPC listings are provided down the right hand side of the platform with organic listings on the left.
It’s important to note that Yahoo JP is not just a search engine but also a portal and the country’s most visited web page. Japanese portals often drive more volumes than actual search engines due to the search trends of this population.

Korea

Naver owns a huge 62% of the South Korean search market with “global” engines such as Google and Yahoo owning just 7% combined. Indeed, such is the dominance of Naver that Google altered its simplistic design to a more portal based option, with limited success.

Naver dominates the market here because it can adapt to the language difficulties and the search trends of South Korea. Naver also has historical and trustworthy presence which is supported by its high online shopping penetration (99%).

The Naver landscape is radically different to the normal organic vs PPC placement. PPC ads dominate the landscape and organic ads are placed only in a small area low down on the page. Furthermore, the same business can be placed numerous times through PPC on one page and PPC ads are powered by Overture and PowerLink. The landscape also displays the top 10 searches of the day and has preferred sites.

The examples above highlight that translating your site is only one part of an international online strategy. Driving traffic through your site through search engine marketing is also key but to get the best targeted traffic and the highest possible lead generation, you need to ensure you work inside and understand local search engines.