What Are The Major Differences Between Google Japan And Yahoo! Japan Search Results?

Google Japan VS. Yahoo! Japan

As mentioned in this post about Japanese search market, Yahoo! Japan’s search engine is powered by Google. However, the search result on Google Japan and Yahoo! Japan for the same search query can be substantially different especially when it comes to something that is pertinent to Japan. When carried out a search for “Digital Marketing” (Transliteration for digital marketing is “デジタルマーケティング‎”) no substantial difference can be observed between Google’s SERP and Yahoo! Japan’s SERP.

  On the other hand, when a search for ” 有吉弘行” (a famous Japanese comedian) substantial differences can be observed not only for the text organic links but also for knowledge graph.   Major differences 1) Universal Search (mixed results on SERP) 2) Personalization 3) Schema utilization   Following table provides a high level overview of the differences between Google Japan and Yahoo! Japan (source)

Major Differences between Google Japan and Yahoo! Japan

Category	Google	Yahoo! Japan	Details
Basic UI	It's own	It's own	Both company developed its own User Interface
Advertising	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Adwords, (Y) Sponsor Search
Ranking Algorism	Google	Google	Algorism by Google but the result search output is different for both company
Universal Search Algorism	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Universal Search - display relevant results based on the search query (Y)Yahoo has its own way of displaying the results
Personalization	Yes	Yes (limited)	(G) Synchronized with Google account (Y)Limited. Only reflecting on sites that have been visited multiple times. Visit more often = shown higher on SERP
Keyword Autocomplete Suggestions	Google	Yahoo! Japan	Both company developed its own
Location Information (Desktop)	Yes	Yes (limited)	Influenced by IP address, synchronized account, search queries, User's preset settings. Both company function differently
Location Information (Mobile)	Yes	Yes	GPS, Wi-Fi, Search queries, User's preset settings
Paid Ads within Organic Search	No	Yes (limited)	(Y) only on a portion of search queries
Ranking difference Desktop V.S. Mobile	Yes	Yes	(G) Depsnding on the signals from the phone (Y) Some yahoo properties will change
Web	Google	Google	Same for Crawl/ Index/ Ranking (Displayed results are different as indicated above)
Images	Google	Google	Same for Crawl/ Index/ Ranking (Displayed results are different as indicated above)
Videos	Google	Google	YouTube, Dailymotion, Yahoo! Japan property, Ustream etc
News	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Google news (Y) Yahoo News
Blogs	Google	No	(G) Google blog (Y) N/A
Shopping	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Google shopping (Y) Yahoo shopping
Local	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Google local (Y) Yahoo local
Application	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Google Play (Y) Yahoo Smartphone applications
Recipes	Google	Yahoo! Japan	Different local Japanese sites for each company
Forums	Google	No	User Generated Content sites
Realtime	No	Yahoo! Japan	(Y) Twitter & Facebook
Auctions	No	Yahoo! Japan	(Y) Yahoo auction
Dictionary	No	Yahoo! Japan	(Y) Various dictionaries
Q&A	No	Yahoo! Japan	(Y) chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp
NAVER ???	No	Yahoo! Japan
Rich Snipet	Google	No
Knowledge Graph	Google	Yahoo! Japan	(G) Wikipedia, Carousel (Y)Link to its own content
Authorship	Google	No	(G)Display picture of the author