South Korea search market review: A nation of Web pioneers, where Google is a bit-part player

The research forms part of the International Search Reviews  series from search marketing firm Reform Digital, aimed at giving insights into the key search markets around the world. 

Key findings of the report include:

• South Korea is the tenth biggest population in terms of internet users, with users there among the first in the world to receive TV through the internet.
• Non-Korean businesses, including non-Korean search engines, have struggled to get a foothold; Google accounts for less than 5% of the search market.
• Google and Yahoo! account for a small portion of search use, while 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.
• Social networks in the South Korean market have succeeded where their western counterparts have failed in terms of monetising their offering through paid-for additions to users' pages.
• 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, whereas 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, while Yahoo!/Overture Search Marketing provides the only real opportunity for western marketers to partake in PPC there (though local sites are 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. 
• Search usage in Korea -  Naver 77%, Daum 11%, Yahoo 5%, Google 2% (source: Nielsen, Jan 2010)

A short summary of the search review paper can be seen at http://www.reformdigital.com/research/international-search-reviews

The PDF is available at - http://www.reformdigital.com/international-search-review/Issue-3-Korea.pdf