In Japan Bing Starts to Have an Impact on Desktop Search
This article originally came out of a post by Arizono Yuichi from Microsoft (thank you for the heads up Arizono Yuichi ) where he noticed that in Desktop search in Japan picked up significantly May 2024. I initially jumped into point out that Bing still does not have much headway on Mobile devices in Japan, and Google continues to dominate... and (yes) Yahoo hangs in there as a significant number two.
Then I took a deeper look at the data and thought, an explanation of the history and mentioning a couple of things that do not add up in StatCounter data for overall search share.
Yahoo! Japan romanced Google in preference to Bing for Organic listings in the early 2010s.
As Yahoo sites around the world came to the realization that their search engine lagged and needed to partner up with other engines, most countries looked towards Bing as the favorable partner and alternative to Google. Yahoo! Japan bucked this trend (as it has done several times due to its relative independence from Yahoo), by switching selecting Google for its organic search results.
Why wasn’t Microsoft’s engine opted for? Well Microsoft’s engine algorithm was not up to scratch for Japanese language searches. Google was the only game in town that could give Yahoo! Japan the quality it needed in search. Of course, there are other factors. Search is only one facet of Yahoo! in Japan.
If you head to the Yahoo! Japan site, you see apparently busy pages leading off to all kinds of services provided by Yahoo – so although search share has slowly declined over the years, Yahoo’s managed to build a brilliant, localized portal/services hub and spin these into separate apps so users will continue to be connected to Yahoo. I still use several service features in Yahoo! Japan that are more natural to me than Google. So, briefly, Yahoo picked the option that would complement its own features.
The emergence of Bing as a player in Desktop search
Fast forward to May/June 2024 where Bing's search share for desktops had gained significantly, eating into Google and (to a lesser extent) Yahoo. This seems to coincide with the emergence of the latest updates in Microsoft Office, not the least of which is Copilot. This is really the hook for getting people into the MS/Bing ecosystem with a tight integration of Office, Copilot, and Bing with Edge browser. Also, Microsoft has moved seriously to improve its Japan search algorithm over recent years. So having the hook and beefing up the search service seems to have led to an increase in the Desktop search share.
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Will this continue? We shall see. But Bing is catching some share now… for Desktops.
Bing still struggling with Mobile search
On the mobile side, Bing is not faring so well. This is to be expected as Microsoft does not have a viable OS in the mobile space. Google has tremendous leverage with dominance provided by Android, and the Apple deal that makes them the default search engine in iOS’ Safari browser. Yahoo still hangs in there at number two, which can be partially attributed to being familiar to Japanese users, and leveraging its local knowledge of the service users want. Also, I think it may be difficult to put Bing as an option when Google, Apple and Yahoo! Japan have strong connections.
The overall make-up for the search ads industry in Japan also tends to favor Google/Yahoo! with many Google ad options incorporated quickly into Yahoo! Japan ads (and incorporated quickly in SA360), and the fact that Yahoo provides ads on Bing (quite the reverse from other markets), Bing will find quite a battle to get into your mobile search here.
Which leads me to the final piece of weirdness I saw on StatCounter. While Bing has grown on desktop, it remains almost non-existent on mobile. Assuming a 20/80 split between Desktop and Mobile (consumer), Bings total search share should be less than StatCounter estimates. Now, like all statistics and data, they should be considered more as pieces of art, rather than absolute reality. This is to be expected. However, when checking the combined numbers, StatCounter suggests that the Desktop/Mobile split is 50/50. Using this Bing appears to have hopped into number 2 position overall. However, if we take a 20/80 split (which would be close for consumer - perhaps up to 35/65 for business) it shows Bing is still trailing in the overall search game at this stage, but is still quite an improvement.
From this data, it shows Bing does have even more potential in Japan if it can find a hook to grab interest in the mobile search space.
Let's see how things pan out.