Yahoo! Japan
Yahoo! Japan (ヤフー, Yafū) is a Japanese web portal. Its search engine was the most-visited website in Japan, nearing monopolistic status.
Type of site | Web portal |
|---|---|
| Available in | Japanese |
| No. of locations | 2 (Nagoya and Osaka) |
| Founder(s) |
|
| Parent |
|
| Subsidiaries | Netrust, Ltd. ASKUL Corporation |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | April 1, 1996 |
| Current status | Online |
According to The Japan Times, as of 2012, Yahoo Japan had a footprint on the internet market in Japan. In terms of use as a search engine, however, it has never surpassed Google. The company is the second largest search engine used in Japan as of July 2021, with a market share of 19% behind Google's 77%.
Yahoo! Japan search engine was a directory-type search engine, similar to Yahoo! in the United States. A crawler-type search engine was used as well, and as the popularity of the crawler-type search engine gradually increased, after October 3, 2005, Yahoo! Japan began utilizing only the crawler-type engine. On June 29, 2017, Yahoo! Japan announced that the directory-based search engine "Yahoo! Category", which had been in operation since its establishment, would be abolished on March 29, 2018.
As a crawler-type search engine, Yahoo! Japan initially used technology from the Japanese company Goo, which used Google's technology. The company later switched to using Yahoo Search Technology (YST), developed by Yahoo! in the US. In addition to serving as a standard search engine, Yahoo! Japan partnered with Twitter to provide real-time search for tweets. It also receives data feeds from partner companies; Cookpad and Naver information is displayed in search results. Yahoo! Search Custom Search was discontinued on March 31, 2019.