Japanese Top Search Keywords 2009 By Yahoo! Japan

Japan Trend #2009 #keyword #ranking #search #Yahoo! Japan

Although it is November, the season of 2009 ranking comes! Yahoo! Japan discloses their annual ranking by what keywords people searched in this year.
As always, all Japanese search engines and portals will follow, but Yahoo! Japan is the No.1 search in Japan, this ranking is one of the best to describe “regular” people’s search behaviour, except the keyword “Yahoo”.

rankingkeywordmeaning2008
1YouTubeNo.1 movie site1
2MixiNo.1 social network2
32 channelNo.1 bulletin board3
4GoogleNo.2 search4
5RakutenNo.1 online mall5
6AmazonNo.2 online mall6
7Niconico DougaNo.2 movie site7
8GooNTT's portal8
9JALNo.1 airline10
10MSNMicrosoft's portal13

As you see, most high-ranked keywords just stay the same positions.

Some notable changes

“HelloWork”(government job centre for unemployment) moving up from 20th to 13th may show that more people have bitter time this year.
Boosted web services:

  • Kakaku.com(Price comparison service) 12th(from 22nd)
  • Amebro(Blog hosting) 14th(-, out of top 50 in 2008)
  • Han Game(online game) 15th(21th)
  • Cookpad(recipe site) 20th(47th)
  • “Zenryaku” for Zenryaku Profile(mobile profile site) 34th(-)
  • Google Maps 42nd(-)
  • Zozo Town(apparel mall) 46th(-)
  • livedoor(portal) 47th(-)

Services Losing positions:

  • Wikipedia 26th(19th)
  • Gurunabi(restaurant guide) 53rd(35th)
  • Rikunabi(job matching) 64th(37th)

None of “Twitter” or “Facebook” appeared on the top 100, yet.

rankingkeywordmeaning2008
1MixiNo.1 PC social network1
22 channelNo.1 bulletin board2
3Mobage TownNo.2 mobile social network3
4YouTubeNo.1 movie site5
5GreeNo.1 mobile social network-
6GoogleNo.2 search7
7RakutenNo.1 online mall9
8AmebroCyberAgent's blog portal-
9AmazonNo.2 online mall8
10McDonaldHamburger Chainstore-

On mobile ranking, 7 of 10 keywords remain from 2008 ranking. 3 bbs sites went away, one of them stopped the service.
yahoo-top-keywords-mobile-2009
As always, erotic words seem to be excluded from the rankings.