Search engine usage in Japan - statistics & facts

The search engine market in Japan

Google is the most used search engine worldwide, and this is also true in the case of Japan. Google managed to become Japan’s principal search engine, a spot previously held by Yahoo, by focusing on the mobile market first. The company entered a partnership with KDDI in 2006, which was then followed by a partnership with NTT Docomo in 2008. As a result, Google’s services became integrated with the devices of two of Japan’s major mobile carriers. In the subsequent years, Google managed to surpass Yahoo Japan Corporation, which had managed to dominate the market with a highly popular portal website that also included a search engine function. The Yahoo web portal, whose search function has been powered by Google since 2010, remains one of the most accessed websites in Japan, making it an attractive host for various services and advertising. While Yahoo Japan Corporation was renamed to Z Holdings Corporation in October 2019 due to a restructuring process, the name of the web portal was not affected by this change.

Search engine usage

According to survey data, the most common type of information searched for via search engines are words or people one does not know, followed by things related to one’s hobbies. Online services play an increasingly important role in people’s daily lives, and while Japanese consumers place a lower amount of trust in the internet as a source of information compared to other media, they nonetheless regard it as an important source of information. This is especially true in the case of younger generations. While social media are frequently used to look for things related to one’s hobbies or to find out more about celebrities one is interested in, people clearly prefer to use search engines when they want to have accurate information.

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