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I am used to seeing (outside of Japan) that, when a company wants to lead a potential customer to its website, it shows its web address on an advertisement. However, in Japan, in most cases, an advertisement does not show its web address, but instead suggests to do a web search using a particular keyword and access whatever it hits. Why is it like that? It looks strange to me, and since a web search is probabilistic, it could lead a customer to some other web page, or a customer may get lost, leading to a loss of potential customers. And in the first place, it requires an extra step. Is there any reason for this being done in Japan?

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I think most likely it is because it's easier to remember a search-term than it is to remember a domain name. If one forgets a domain name, chances of getting to the website is as close as 0.. – Pacerier May 12 '12 at 11:53
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I do not think that this is a question about the Japanese language. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 12 '12 at 16:37
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I'm not sure about this one. It seems like a borderline case, since although the question doesn't overtly reference the Japanese language or usage, its posting here does effectively imply that sawa believes the peculiarities of the Japanese language my be a contributing factor. – ジョン May 13 '12 at 0:28
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@Andrew Grimm: The question is about usage of URLs. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 13 '12 at 1:36
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On top of everything that was said here: why are there url shortening webservices? Because it might be easier to remember (or in some cases read) a shortened url or keyword search than a whole url. You've got to remember that until very recently, as ジョン points out, kanji/kana urls were not possible. Another point is that most of the target audience for these ads might not have great experience at reading romanized characters. Can you remember what it was like when you started learning to read kana? Did it take you a while to get meaning? Same thing with urls, except that ads are super short – Jamie Taylor May 14 '12 at 7:31
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closed as off topic by Tsuyoshi Ito, istrasci, Dave M G, silvermaple, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 12 '12 at 20:35

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1 Answer

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I always thought this was due to a (perhaps misguided) marketing attitude that people find it easier to deal with the name of the company in kanji/kana and search for this, than remember the romanised equivalent used for the domain name (especially since there are various differing systems of romanisation). Sure, kanji/kana domain names are now possible, but unusual enough to not look like real domain names to many people (in my experience of using one).

Perhaps marketers also have a perception that people struggle to get the domain suffix right (out of .com, .jp, .co.jp etc). I believe this to be the case in the UK (my home country) also, where some advertisers are just starting to favour this method of directing people to their website. This seems to be based on the idea that domain names are confusing for some people, so plain search terms are more "user friendly".

So although it's one more step for the viewer to get to the website, they probably think it gives a higher overall chance of them finding the website. Although search results are probabilistic, I have never seen a case where the company in whose advert I saw the search term was not the top result. I believe many also purchase search-engine advertising to make sure they appear "above the fold" of the search results page in any event.

Although some of this is informally backed up from a conversation years ago with a web developer friend, obviously this answer is more conjecture than concrete facts, so please refute at will.

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In addition to these points, there are some possible advantages of using keywords other than the company names in ads: they are probably useful for access analysis, funny keywords may receive more attention, and so on. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 12 '12 at 16:37
I did not know about that in UK. Interesting to know. – sawa May 13 '12 at 0:14
@sawa An incident today reminded me of this discussion. I was explaining to a friend how to login to the new Gmail-powered University e-mail service, and explained that she should go to www.gmail.com. Confused, she asked "so just Google gmail.com?". I responded "well, or just type it in the URL bar", which after a confused look, prompted her to type www.google.com into the URL bar, and then do a Google search for www.gmail.com. It would appear that advertisers' concerns are at least partially valid, and this was even without the potential romanization problems in the case of Japanese websites. – ジョン Jun 6 '12 at 2:16

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