Yahoo! JAPAN vs Google Ads: where your search budget in Japan should go

Most international brands run search in Japan the way they run it everywhere else: one Google Ads account, often managed from a regional hub, with Yahoo! JAPAN missing or folded into a line called "other". That is rarely a disaster. It is often a leak.

The short answer: for most brands Google should get most of the budget, Yahoo! JAPAN should get a share sized to your buyers' age, and your own brand name should be covered on both from the first day. Below: how to size that share, how to measure both platforms the same way, and what changed in 2026.

What the share numbers say, and what they hide

Search share in Japan is usually quoted from StatCounter, and the figure depends heavily on the month and the device. In February 2025, StatCounter had Google at 80.2%, Yahoo! at 9.5% and Bing at 8.5% across all devices. By September 2026 the same source showed Google at 59.3%, Bing at 31.4% and Yahoo! at 7.6%.

Bing did not win a third of Japanese consumers in eighteen months. The jump sits almost entirely on desktop, where StatCounter now puts Bing ahead of Google (51.8% against 42.2% in September 2026). No one outside Microsoft has published a clear cause; the usual explanation is office PCs running Edge and Copilot by default. For a consumer brand, the figure that matters is mobile: in September 2026 that split was Google 85.1%, Yahoo! 11.8% and Bing under 1%.

Two things follow. Yahoo! JAPAN's share is higher on smartphones than on desktop, which contradicts the "Yahoo is for desktop users" line in many English guides. And share of searches undersells Yahoo! JAPAN as a portal. LY Corporation, the company formed when LINE and Yahoo! JAPAN merged in 2023, reports 54 million monthly logged-in Yahoo! JAPAN user IDs (March 2025) in a country of about 124 million people. Many of them come for news, weather or mail, with the search box on the same page.

In Dentsu's figures for 2025, search ads (検索連動型広告) were the largest format in Japanese internet advertising: 38.7% of ¥3.31 trillion in media spend.

Same organic results, separate ad platform

Yahoo! JAPAN's organic results have come from Google's search technology since 2010. LY Corporation tested other providers before the contract's planned end in March 2025, then extended it by two years, so Google's engine stays behind Yahoo! search until at least March 2027. SEO work done for Google mostly carries over, though Yahoo! wraps the results in its own modules: news, Yahoo!知恵袋 (its Q&A site) and shopping.

Ads are a separate matter. Google Ads do not appear on Yahoo! JAPAN. Paid placements there are bought through LY Corporation's own platform, which was renamed on 1 April 2026: "Yahoo!広告 検索広告" became "LINEヤフー広告 検索広告", LY Ads search ads in English. The search product works as before. The bigger change is on display, where LINE Ads and Yahoo! display ads were merged; LINE Ads stops serving around late October 2026 and closes at the end of March 2027. If your plan includes LINE ads, the migration needs an owner now. We cover that side in our guide to LINE for international brands.

The LY Ads account is separate, with its own billing, its own editorial review and parts of the interface only in Japanese. Reviewers generally expect the ad copy, the landing page and your business details to be in Japanese. If you also sell on Yahoo!ショッピング (Yahoo! Shopping), its sponsored listings now run through a different tool, Yahoo! JAPAN Commerce Ad Manager, which replaced ストアマッチ (Store Match) when that closed at the end of July 2025. Search ads and shopping ads are two budgets with two sets of numbers.

Who still searches on Yahoo! JAPAN

Age is the clearest dividing line. In a March 2024 survey of people aged 15 to 59, Google was the top search tool in every age group, but Yahoo! use rose with age while YouTube, Instagram and TikTok rose among the young. A 2025 survey of 1,200 people found men in their sixties using Google (68%) and Yahoo! (65%) at almost the same rate. Among women in their twenties, TikTok (51%) came ahead of Google (41%) as a way to look things up.

So the deciding factor is the age of the person who pays. A supplement for women over 50, a life insurance product, a car, a private clinic or a home renovation service: for these, Yahoo! JAPAN belongs in the core plan. Streetwear for people in their twenties: cover your brand name there and spend the rest on Google and social.

How we'd split the budget

There is no reliable public benchmark for the split, and click prices vary too much by category to quote one. Agencies often say Yahoo! JAPAN clicks are cheaper. Sometimes they are, usually where fewer advertisers bid. Test it in your category before moving money on it.

This is the order we'd follow:

1. Brand terms on both platforms from day one. That means 指名検索 (searches for your own name), including katakana spellings and the name plus 口コミ (reviews). They usually cost little, and they stop resellers and competitors from taking the top paid spot on your name.
2. Category terms start on Google. Yahoo! JAPAN gets a share that matches your buyers' age profile. As a starting point, not a rule, that might be a tenth of non-brand search spend for a young audience and up to a third for buyers over 45.
3. After six to eight weeks, or once each platform has around 30 conversions, move money toward the lower cost per acquisition, measured the same way on both.

By category, this is where we'd start:

Example: a skincare brand selling on its own site and Rakuten

Take a European skincare brand with a Japanese online store and a Rakuten shop. It spends ¥1.5 million a month on Google search and nothing on Yahoo! JAPAN. Most buyers are women aged 30 to 50.

The first check is the brand name itself. Searches such as "[brand] 口コミ" or "[brand] 最安値" (lowest price) often show Rakuten, Amazon, resellers and beauty blogs above the brand's own site. In the outside reviews we do of international brands, other sites answering for the brand is one of the most frequent findings. So brand and brand-plus-口コミ terms go live on Yahoo! JAPAN, with Japanese headlines pointing to a Japanese page that actually answers the review question.

Next, the category terms already converting on Google, such as "セラミド 化粧水" (ceramide toner), go to Yahoo! JAPAN with ¥200,000 to ¥300,000 a month. Only proven terms, not the full list.

Then measurement, and the catch: Rakuten sales are invisible to both ad tags. The brand compares own-site orders from each platform weekly and watches Rakuten sales of the advertised products during a two-week pause of the Yahoo! campaigns. It is rough. It is still better than assuming Yahoo! contributes nothing to Rakuten.

Example: a B2B software company with a small Tokyo team

A US software company with three people in Tokyo sells to mid-sized Japanese firms. Buyers search at work, on office PCs, and request demos. Here we'd keep Google as the main platform and add Microsoft Advertising, available in Japan since May 2022, as a small test because of Bing's desktop position. Yahoo! JAPAN runs brand terms plus a handful of "[category] 比較" (comparison) terms. Japanese business buyers lean on comparison sites such as BOXIL and ITトレンド, so part of the search budget may work harder as a listing there.

Measuring both the same way

Most measurement problems we see are not technical. Google is measured carefully, and Yahoo! is measured by someone else, differently, or not at all.

On Yahoo! JAPAN, the setup is a サイトジェネラルタグ (site general tag) on every page, a コンバージョン測定タグ (conversion tag) on the thank-you page, and the complementary tag that helps with browser tracking limits. All of them can go through Google Tag Manager. Turn on auto-tagging so each click carries the YCLID parameter. Since 2025 there is also a conversion API for search ads, which holds up better against browser blocking; worth adding if your developers already run server-side tracking for Google.

Three rules keep the comparison honest. Use one conversion definition on both platforms, so a purchase on one is never compared with an add-to-cart on the other. Add UTM tags to Yahoo! ads, so GA4 records them as their own source instead of mixing them into Yahoo! organic traffic. And report brand and non-brand terms separately on each platform, because brand clicks convert well enough to make any platform look good.

Mistakes we often see in international setups

• Only Google is measured, so Yahoo! JAPAN looks weak, gets cut, and searches for your name there go to resellers.
• English page titles or English ad headlines. Japanese searchers skip what they cannot read at a glance.
• Brand terms left open, so a competitor or reseller holds the first paid result on your own name.
• Keyword lists translated from English. Japanese searches use their own words: 口コミ (reviews), 評判 (reputation), おすすめ (recommended), 比較 (comparison), plus katakana versions of your name.
• Head-office reports that show Yahoo! JAPAN as one line, so no one sees which terms work there.

A short checklist

• Your brand name, its katakana spelling and brand plus 口コミ are live on both platforms.
• Titles, ad copy and landing pages are in natural Japanese.
• The Yahoo! site general tag, conversion tag and auto-tagging are live, and every Yahoo! ad has UTM tags.
• One conversion definition and one monthly report, with brand and non-brand split for each platform.
• A date to review the split, and a minimum number of conversions before money moves.
• If you used LINE Ads, the move to LY Ads display is done before late October 2026.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes first, Meridian's free outside review looks at how your brand appears in Japanese searches on Google and Yahoo! JAPAN and sets out three opportunities we would act on first.