Motoko’s weblog

I didn’t write much here last year. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say. In fact, I had a lot to say, and expressed my idea, opinions, etc. at other sites (including ClickZ.asia), events, and conferences. It’s also been expressed in social channels. If you are interested in my articles, please see a list here. One of the articles, “How to get more value from your on-site search data” was particularly well received, and later re-published on Mashable.

Social media, mobile, local, apps, cloud, e-commerce, big site, big brand, etc., while it’s important to understand each media, I’m curious about CONTINUE READING »

When Yahoo Japan and Google announced their partnership for web searches and PPC advertising, many expressed concerns. Rakuten was one of the organizations, who publicly accused that the partnership was a violation of the antitrust law. A year after the announcement, and 6 months after Yahoo Japan adopting Google’s technologies, Rakuten switched the team, and CONTINUE READING »

The devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Northern part of Japan on March 11 (Japan time). While I hear lots of up-to-date information in Japanese, I find the information in other language is very limited. There are more than 2 million foreigners live in Japan, and many tourists visit Japan throughout the year.

Most of the sites listed here are in English. Some of them offer the information in other languages, too. (You’ll see a link to other language on their site.) Hope the information here help non-Japanese speakers in Japan, and non-Japanese speakers who know someone in Japan.

If you know of any useful sites and the services not listed here, please post it in the comment. CONTINUE READING »

On the day 1 of SES NY this year, I am presenting for “Key Points in Launching a Global Website” session from 4:15pm. Effectively managing a website targeting your local market is one thing, and managing a website (or websites) targeting multiple market is definitely another. I am going to show some data, examples and how-to information that come from my experiences in working with clients who have multinational and global websites.

Here’s the session description:

As the world becomes smaller and search marketing becomes more complex, the era of “ranking well in Google” is over. This is especially true for companies who are targeting multiple markets or countries. This new opportunity also brings many new complexities to be considered other than standard SEO. CONTINUE READING »