Baidu Japan started its mobile search service. In addition to mobile sites, it searches web, images/photos and videos. The unique service of this new search engine is that it lets you search with “Emoji” (emoticon) , too! Some of you may remember that iPhone struggled to gain the market share in Japan when it was introduced to the market. One of the biggest reasons why people didn’t want to use iPhone was that you couldn’t use “Emoji” with iPhone. Since then, Softbank added this Emoji function to iPhone, and now it’s the most popular mobile phones in Japan. In fact, Emoji is a big part of communication method for Japanese people not only with instant messaging, but with blogs, SMSs, etc. One of the first functions added to mixi (Japan’s popular SNS site) was a list of emoticons, too.

However, enabling Emoji search on mobile is much more than a “fun” factor, it helps search experiences. For example, when you search for “Dentist + (emoticon for phone)”, Baidu would give dentist sites with phone number in the search results. Since you are searching with mobile, you could then call a dentist straight from the search results.

To access Baidu mobile, you can scan QR code on the page linked above, or go to http://m.baidu.jp. They offer Baidu webmaster tool for mobile here: http://webmaster.baidu.jp/mobile/

Here’s a list of Emoji per provider: http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/service/3G/mail/pictogram/list.html