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Vol. VII · No. 14 · Tokyo
RANKING JAPAN ESTABLISHED 2019 · TOKYO

順位 THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE INTELLIGENCE DESK FOR JAPAN SEARCH

A desk built for the world's most misunderstood search market.

Since 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo. Ranking Japan decodes how search actually behaves across Google.co.jp and Yahoo! JAPAN — so global SEO teams stop guessing and start compounding.

Get the Weekly Japan SERP Brief

Read by 141,800+ SEO professionals · 47% average open rate · Cited by Nikkei Digital Gear, ITmedia Marketing & Web担当者Forum

CHAPTER 01 · ORIGIN

Why the publication exists.

In 2019, our founding editor — then running SEO for a foreign e-commerce brand that had just entered the Japanese market — noticed a pattern. Every global team she briefed was working from translated English keyword data, assumptions lifted from U.S. SERPs, and the occasional blog post about how "Japanese users search differently." None of it held up under inspection. Google.co.jp and Yahoo! JAPAN behave like two distinct markets bolted into one country. The signals don't translate. The tools don't localize. The brief never arrived.

So we built the desk. Ranking Japan was founded in Shibuya in October 2019 as an English-language intelligence publication dedicated to how search actually behaves in Japan — written for the global teams who need to win there but cannot read the primary research in Japanese.

CHAPTER 02 · SCOPE

What we cover, every trading day.

Our analysts track more than 1,842,000 unique Japanese keywords daily across Google.co.jp and Yahoo! JAPAN — surfacing the algorithm shifts, ranking volatility, and demand signals that quietly move the needle between the two engines. Every Tuesday, the Weekly Japan SERP Brief ships a curated read of the previous week: volatility readings, won-loss keyword movements, and the editor's note on what it means for global SEO strategy.

Our proprietary JP-SERP Volatility Index — the first published comparative gauge of Google.co.jp versus Yahoo! JAPAN rank stability — was adopted by Nikkei Digital Gear in its 2024 search trends report and is now referenced across Japan's top-five digital agencies.

BY THE NUMBERS

The footprint, in figures.

Five years of daily tracking, a Tokyo-based bilingual desk, and a subscriber base that reads us before its Tuesday standup.

1,842,000+
Unique Japanese keywords tracked daily across Google.co.jp and Yahoo! JAPAN
141,800+
Email subscribers as of Q1 2025 — including teams at Mercari, Rakuten, Recruit, Sony & LINE
1,920+
Long-form SERP analyses published since launch
47%
Average weekly brief open rate (vs. 21% industry benchmark, MailerLite 2024)

RECOGNITION & CITATION FOOTPRINT

"The first publication to publish the Yahoo! JAPAN vs. Google.co.jp market-share series — now cited by four of Japan's top-five digital agencies."

Winner, Asia Search Awards 2023 — Best Use of Search in Publishing, Independent Category

Cited by Nikkei Digital Gear, ITmedia Marketing & Web担当者Forum · Featured speaker at BrightEdge Japan Summit 2023 & 2024

検索 — search, read between two engines.

THE DESK

Twelve analysts deep — fluent in both Tokyo SERPs and the English-language teams who need them read.

A bilingual research team based across Shibuya and Osaka: native Japanese analysts writing for global SEO professionals, and bilingual editors who keep both sides in the same room.

Editorial portrait of Ranking Japan's head of research seated at a Tokyo desk

HEAD OF RESEARCH · TOKYO

M. Akiyama

Twelve years inside the JP search ecosystem before founding the desk. Sets the editorial brief each Monday morning and signs off on the weekly volatility reading. Speaks fluent ranking-factor Japanese — and fluent client-translation English.

"The interesting work is the gap between what an English deck says about Japan and what the SERPs actually did that week."

Editorial portrait of Ranking Japan's Yahoo! JAPAN specialist at his workstation

YAHOO! JAPAN SPECIALIST · OSAKA

R. Tachibana

Joined from a domestic agency where he led Yahoo! JAPAN search campaigns for three of Japan's top-ten e-commerce properties. Owns the weekly Yahoo! JAPAN vs. Google.co.jp market-share series — the data point that launched the publication.

"Yahoo! JAPAN isn't a footnote. For two of every five commercial queries, it's the primary surface. Treating it as legacy is the most expensive mistake a global team can make in market."

Editorial portrait of Ranking Japan's localization analyst at her workstation

LOCALIZATION & KEYWORD DEMAND · TOKYO

K. Mori

Eight years translating between Tokyo product teams and London / New York SEO leads. Runs the keyword demand desk under our exclusive partner data feed with Similarweb for Japan-market query volume — and writes the bilingual glossary that ships with every new long-form analysis.

"Demand data is where translation fails first. A query that looks identical in English can move 4× the volume because of one kanji compound — and only a native reading catches it."

Plus nine more analysts across the Tokyo and Osaka desks, four contributing editors, and the founding partners who keep the lights on at Shibuya Stream Hall.

検索 THE WEEKLY JAPAN SERP BRIEF

Read what 141,800+ SEO teams read every Tuesday morning.

One curated brief. Five sections. The week's Google.co.jp and Yahoo! JAPAN volatility, the won-loss keyword movements, and the editor's note on what it means for global strategy — in your inbox before the Tokyo market opens.

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