On January 29, 2013, Donnamedia presented another list on the digital behaviour of Japanese Internet users. This time the topic was ‘search engines’ and the list below shows us an interesting overview of the most visited search engines in Japan.
| Rank | Search Engine | URL | Pageviews | Movement |
| 1位 | Yahoo!検索 | search.yahoo.co.jp | 7,320,000,000 | |
| 2位 | Google日本 | google.co.jp | 4,710,000,000 | |
| 3位 | YouTube | youtube.com | 1,730,000,000 | |
| 4位 | ニコニコ動画 | nicovideo.jp | 542,000,000 | （約0.1％↑） |
| 5位 | @nifty | nifty.com | 491,000,000 | （約1.6％↑） |
| 6位 | Bing | live.com | 469,000,000 | |
| 7位 | google.com | 415,000,000 | ||
| 8位 | BIGLOBE | biglobe.ne.jp | 378,000,000 | （約2.5％↑） |
| 9位 | Bing | bing.com | 265,000,000 | |
| 10位 | livedoor | livedoor.com | 251,000,000 | |
| 11位 | OCN | ocn.ne.jp | 202,000,000 | |
| 12位 | excite | excite.co.jp | 175,000,000 | |
| 13位 | NAVERまとめ | matome.naver.jp | 164,000,000 | （約22％↑） |
| 14位 | Infoseek楽天 | infoseek.co.jp | 149,000,000 | |
| 15位 | goo | goo.ne.jp | 93,900,000 | （約2.1％↑） |
| 16位 | AllAbout | allabout.co.jp | 84,300,000 | |
| 17位 | So-net | so-net.ne.jp | 80,400,000 | |
| 18位 | デイリーモーション | dailymotion.com | 71,500,000 | |
| 19位 | OKWave | okwave.jp | 57,400,000 | （約13％↑） |
| 20位 | Vector | vector.co.jp | 40,100,000 | （約4.1％↑） |
The pie charts below will illustrate my point a little bit clearer.These numbers are actually in line with the latest available official numbers on the Japanese search engine market share from 2009, which show a share of around 55% for Yahoo! Japan and 30% for Google.
However, these numbers are already three years old and looking at this table with the fresh data, we can see a trend which shows that the relative market share of the Google search properties (google.co.jp and google.com together) is bigger now compared to the numbers three years ago, under the assumption that other competitors have the exact same share as before.
The pie charts below will illustrate my point a little bit clearer.
Again, these pie charts do NOT represent the accurate market share distribution of the Japanese search engine market, but rather tries to show a trend of the relative popularity between the two biggest players in the Japanese search engine market.
I hope that official numbers/studies on the market share are coming soon and will show whether or not I am right with my interpretation, but until then we have to work with the available data we have out there. After all, I think that Donnamedia’s data gives us an interesting insight into the latest development of the search engine market share in Japan in 2012.
What do you think about this latest development? Please leave a message in the comment section if you have other insights or data sets regarding this topic.
