On March 28, Yahoo announced its closer cooperation with Naver Japan by implementing a new search algorithm especially for Naver Matome.

At that time we could only speculate as to how exactly Yahoo would blend Matome search results into its own SERPs. To add, due to the enormous popularity of this content curation website, rumors suggested that it may have even been ranked above the PPC results.

In the second week of July, Yahoo finally integrated Naver Matome into its SERPs. However, looking at the Yahoo!Japan SERP now, it seems that the biggest search engine in Japan decided to treat these search results just like other vertical search properties such as images, knowledge, news, or real-time searches.

Usually one to three Naver Matome results are shown (see screen shot below), and the placement of these results depends on the keyword and the relevancy of the Naver Matome results in regard to the search query.

As Naver Matome is now using the same Yahoo search algorithm on its own website, naturally the top one to three results of the Naver Matome internal search engine are shown in the Nave Matome section of the Yahoo!Japan SERP:

This is yet another example of how Yahoo Japan is differentiating its SERP from Google Japan. Not only do Yahoo Japan’s vertical search results use different sources from Google, but the types of the verticals are becoming more and more unique and following most recent trends, which will only make it harder for Google to gain more shares in the Japanese SEO market.