Marketer’s Guide to South Korea's Search Engine
April 18, 2022
Around the free world, Google is known as the global search engine leader, but one of the prime markets where the online giant has struggled to replicate its dominance is South Korea. Although it might be challenging for those of us whose daily lives revolve around Google, the search engine giant only managed to attract 35% of active Korean users in 2021. A surprising statistic for a nation of more than 51 million people living in the third largest e-commerce market in the Asia-Pacific region. With a dominating share of Korea’s online retail trade (which exceeds $80 billion annually), the South Korean online platform Naver decided to create its own digital ecosystem tailored to local search results. This proved to be a strategic blow to Google’s internationally-biased results pages.
Often called the “Korean Google”, Naver debuted in 1999 as a web portal just one year after Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Although not officially a search engine, Naver functions in a similar way to Yahoo and America Online. Whereas Google likely had superior technology for crawling websites and archiving page content, it was the nuances in the Korean language that gave Naver the upper hand in curating a better online search experience using Hangul orthography. Today, most Koreans have Naver as their homepage as it provides instant access to a broad range of online services including trending topics, relevant real-time information, and social networking as well as lots of user-generated content.
Differences in Naver Search Results
Technically not a search engine, Naver does provide a search engine results page (Naver SERP) that changes depending on the keyword phrase and the platform being used, such as a mobile device or a desktop computer. Moreover, Naver search results are tailored to the user’s age, gender, and location while offering personalized features similar to Google’s paid inclusions, product shopping, videos, images, map functions, book libraries, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and music. One noticeable difference is the overall lack of websites listed as compared to Google’s Page One. Whereas Google is just now touting its MUM (multimodal unified model) algorithm, Naver was a step ahead in providing an array of vertical findings on the first search page. So much so, it is not uncommon for a Naver Blog to outrank a prominent business website. Since Naver’s search algorithms are built specifically for the Korean culture, it proved easier for the online platform to deliver more relevant results for highly localized queries.
Global Marketing Opportunities for Naver Users
Naver accepts foreign business registrations on the website. But remember, writing blogs is a very important step in improving any entity’s overall rankings in Naver's blended search results. The platform’s algorithms do favor fresh, original content, which is critical for businesses who are trying to optimize their website for SEO. Using Naver Blog, international companies can create a comprehensive profile that includes the business’s history, products, services, and more. In addition, the blog’s flexible layout options are excellent for brand imaging and the platform offers multiple ways of interacting directly with consumers. To reap the benefits of Naver’s blog-centric base, a company must create an account and produce original content in Korean, which is the only available language.
It is important to learn from Naver’s strategies. After all, they created the online platform that fended off Google’s quest for e-commerce domination. While Google’s Korean SERP results look more global and generic, Naver pushes its own online properties with results that claim about 2/3rds of the market share in South Korea. With blocks of images, flash banners, and multimodal sections, Naver’s results page may look extremely cluttered for Western eyes, but it is crucial that you understand Google’s SERPs looks far too empty to South Korean customers. An accurate use of the Korean language is critical for building relationships and communicating your brand imaging. For now, consider that it is only after reading through fresh user-generated content that the prospective Korean buyer will likely advance to your company's organic listing in Naver.
Understanding how Naver works means reaching across many facets of the Korean culture and language, from basic SEO strategies to providing a steady flow of blogs written in Hangul. For optimal results in translating and interpreting your organization’s messages and brand, contact ProLingo at 800-287-9755 to discuss your specific needs.
