Reform continues on its world tour with issue number three of the “International Search Review.” After the first two issues covered China and Russia, this one looks at a search market that many western marketers struggle to decipher. Download a copy of the full “Korea Search Review” issue here.
South Korea (like China and Russia) is another one of the top ten markets in the world when it comes to internet population and is a market that adapted broadband faster than most western markets – to the point where viewing TV via the internet is far from a new thing. TV might also be the last chance for Google to crack this market, as rumours circulate about Samsung and Google partnering on a TV and mobile internet service – and “mobile search” usage being something that Naver may be a step behind on.
Still, Naver and Daum are the main search engines in South Korea, and SEO in this market is much less of a consideration for marketers here. For one, SEO is not nearly as important – taking up only a small portion of a search engine’s results. At the same time, it’s not nearly as advanced either, as engines like Naver opt to fill the results with links to their own sites, along with various different types of PPC and paid placements listings. Users are content with this, showing a brand loyalty that reflects in browser usage too (Internet Explorer has a 98% share in this market), thus making the chance of changing user preference even slimmer.
Yahoo!/Overture Search Marketing provides the only real opportunity for western marketers to partake in PPC here (though local sites are still given some priority), while SEO has little to do with tags, content and link strength, but more to do with saturation such as via social media and user generated content.
South Korea is also a big market when it comes to online communities, such as gaming and social networks. Over 90% of South Koreans in their twenties have accounts in CyWorld (the biggest social network in Korea), while Facebook and MySpace have failed to crack the market at all. CyWorld has also become a place where companies effectively promote products, including via endorsements that fans can integrate with.
Download a copy of the full “South Korea Search Review” issue here
Key findings in the document include:
- Search engine usage: Naver 77%, Daum 11%, Yahoo 5%, Google 2% (source: Nielsen, Jan 2010)
- 37.5 million internet users (source: Internet World Stats)
- 95% broadband penetration (source: Arstechnica, 2009)
- South Korea’s two main search engines Naver and Daum have inspired a lot of recent western search engine innovation, such as Yahoo! Answers and Google Universal Search, though both engines serve search results that are predominantly paid links and their own sites.
- South Korean search users demonstrate a different attitude to those in the west; users in South Korea anticipate that their search engine knows what they are looking for, and will find it for them, where as western searchers are more ‘DIY’ and use search engines as tools to find something for themselves.
- Commercial or paid-for search coverage is prevalent in this market. Natural search plays little or no role in this market.
Reform also works with sites that are looking for a global SEO strategy in markets such as Korea. The England 2018 Bid website at www.england2018bid.com recently expanded content across various markets, including Korea.
As a result, we are now a featured result in natural search there (result in Daum search shown above) and the England 2018 site appears for Korean language variations of “world cup”, making it the second most common language for search traffic on the site in June 2010 so far (after English).
To get more details on this and everything else, download a copy of the full issue – and let us know any comments/feedback. Contact us, and we’ll get the next issue out to you before anyone else gets it.
Update – Latest news shows that Daum is closing the gap on Naver, with various sources cited at http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2010/07/133_69058.html
Also, at the end of June, Google launched Korean voice search – http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-launches-korean-voice-search.html
While the reviews on how well Google voice search works on your mobile (don’t try using it anywhere loud for instance, such as outdoors) have been mixed, moves like this at least help to give Google some channel that they have a slight advantage on (Google Korea is pushing mobile co-branding as a way to get in this market), so it is something to keep an eye on.
Blog post by Niall Madden, Director at Reform
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