Search Engines: Locals Make an Impact

By Napoletani, Rob

Five of the region’s top 10 search engine brands are local, a good sign for domestic brands up against the Western giants in Asia’s growing online market. Rob Napoletani investigates While Google and Yahoo are the two top dogs of search engines in Asia- Pacific, both armed with a strong presence in the majority of countries across the region, the growing appeal of local search engines is starting to encroach on their territory.

China’s premier search engine Baidu, for example, comes third in the category rankings, posing a very real potential threat to the Western brands. Meanwhile, South Korean number one brand Naver, owned by NHN Corporation, and number two Korean brand Daum, land impressive fourth and fifth places. Naver has around 75 per cent of domestic share, and also has operations in Japan and China. These three brands all trump Microsoft-owned MSN, which trails in sixth place.

A comScore report published in June also cites the same top three players. Google sites are the most popular search engine with 39 per cent of all searches; second is Yahoo with 24 per cent, followed by Baidu with nearly 17 per cent. Five of the top 10 search brands in the report were local brands such as Naver, Daum, Alibaba, and Tencent, indicating the potential for success of domestic brands in Asia’s online arena.

Baidu has made moves to close the gap at the top this year by launching its search engine brand in Japan at www.baidu.jp, after a year of successful testing in the market. Four types of searches are offered via the site – web search, image search, video search and blog search. The company says it will focus on developing search products that complement Japanese users’ habits and preferences.

Google and Yahoo have also been active, especially in Asia’s emerging markets. Despite a recent rough patch in Vietnam’s booming economy, for example, activity in the search category here is strong. Google has launched its online social networking brand Orkut, via a campaign by creative agency Bates141.

Yahoo is running a 12-week TV, print, outdoor and online campaign to raise awareness of the brand and draw the country’s youth consumers to the portal. The campaign theme uses a traditional Vietnamese fairytale, in a modern setting, to portray Yahoo as the gateway to unlimited possibilities in the online world.

Indeed, Yahoo has delivered some of the category’s most innovative campaigns in the region, most notably its audacious Yahoo News campaign in Taiwan, which used mainstream TV news to drive people online to the Yahoo News stream. However, despite the brand’s dominance in a number of Asian markets, the brand continues to struggle in China, where major player Baidu holds 60 per cent of the market share and Google 26 per cent. Yahoo China commands under 10 per cent.

It is Korea, however, that is the most interesting market. Western brands rank very low in the country’s search statistics, largely due to homegrown, sophisticated search technology.

Naver is the top search engine in the country, attracting around 16 million visitors per day. It has developed a unique search technology that utilises its own database of user-generated information, where Koreans can answer questions for one another via the site. Search results are categorised and displayed in neat compartments all on one screen, covering web-based text, news, blogs, online communities, books, shopping and more.

Yahoo Korea, formerly the country’s top search portal, has incorporated this approach into its website in the form of its Q&A service, which has also been applied to other Yahoo services around the globe.

Google too has launched a localised website and opened a research lab in Korea, seeing the country as a cutting-edge frontier in the global search market. Talks have also begun with competitor Daum about a possible content sharing and technology deal that could help the brands to challenge Naver.

Daum launched its Korean search engine in 2006, which was then integrated into its existing network of virtual cafes – expansive online communities with up to three million members. In just two years, Daum has become the nation’s second most popular search engine.

Korea has become a hotbed for the latest in online innovations and is being studied closely by Western brands looking to stay ahead of internet trends in the West.

Search brands in Asia-Pacific must maintain a localised approach to product development and advertising, which is tailored to the domestic culture and tastes.

Keeping consumers happy and services good is primary, and this will in turn benefit a brand’s advertising and search marketing revenues.

CASE STUDY HOW YAHOO CROSSED MEDIA CHANNELS IN TAIWAN

Owing to consumer perceptions of Yahoo as a light-hearted, functional brand, Yahoo News was not enjoying the traffic seen at other online news sites. In order to build credibility for Yahoo News in Taiwan, other competitors – the TV news channels – were persuaded to enter into a cross-selling relationship whereby viewers were directed to the Yahoo News site in order to register their reactions to that day’s news.

Yahoo News mood icons were used as communication tools to catch the 12- to 35-year-old core target’s attention and invite interaction. Users were asked to comment on the news: were the stones interesting, warm, bombastic, sad, practical, happy, boring or aggressive? The campaign included collaboration with three major 24-hour TV news channels and 12 famous TV news anchors. There was prominent visual placement with frequent presentation of Yahoo News icons during news reports. Anchors invited audiences to vent their feelings on Yahoo News and voting results placed ‘user-voted’ news at the end of each broadcast. In addition to its presence on the news channels, popular personalities and actors were used to promote Yahoo News mood features through online video broadcasts. Taiwanese bloggers were also brought to life as online news announcers to attract younger audiences to Yahoo News. The campaign saw an increase of 3.5 million page-views to Yahoo News channel during the campaign, 70 per cent more than the planned target result.

Domestic reach…global giants such as Google have to contest the market with strong local players

Top 10 Search Engines

1 Google

2 Yahoo

3 Baidu

4 Naver

5 Daum

6 MSN

7 Sanook

8 goo

9 Sina

10 PCHome

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Sep 4, 2008

(c) 2008 Media; Asia’s Newspaper for Media, Marketing and Advertising. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.