Naver is the most used search service in Korea. Some Koreans even have a viceral repulsion for the way Google looks and works. Here is a small comparison. [Big Thanks to my friend Dayo for making me write this small piece]
This comparison, I hope, will help answer those 3 questions and explain why Naver is beating Google in Korea :
- Why is Naver so used in Korea ?
- Why is Google not used in Korea ?
- Why is Naver not used outside Korea ?
Naver Most Used Features (All on the same page)
- Web search
- Blog and blog search
- Maps
- News
- Image search (better than Google’s in the User experience, not the accuracy in my opinion)
Crowd generated content
- Content is mostly generated by users blogging. Koreans blog about anything. I’m amazed to see my wife looking for a restaurant in Paris, on a Naver Korean Blog ! But she is right. You have more chance to find pictures (a lot, and it matters) on a Korean blog more than in the local Google search (maybe because France is not well served on the subject)
- The pitfall is that sometimes, like with Wikipedia, the content lakes objectivity. My wife experience confronting someones error on his blog. When told the owner of the blog argued that he was right because all other Naver bloggers put the same piece of information. But they were all wrong (about a movie filming location in Italy). Even the official-looking Naver equivalent of IMDB was re-using bloggers wrong information. Very dangerous in my opinion.
Form/Appearance
- As you may know, Hangul is 20% more compact than latin Alphabet. Hence the amount of information that can fit on a page is higher. And because they can, they do. My wife like other Koreans prefers scrolling through a long page with a lot of info instead of having to click deeper.
- For some Korean people I know : “Google is ugly and messy”, and “Naver is ordered and easy to read”
- Naver is only in Korean as far as I know.
Technical / Performance
- As a developer : this is kind of a mystery : the Naver site, like so many Korean websites, have to be IE6 compatible (because of a custom government certificate problem). Hence it is terribly inefficient Yet the speed of the broadband connection is so high that most Korean don’t realize. But as soon as you look at the way pages are built, you discover how much bandwidth is needed every time the page reloads. Horrifying !
Advertising on Naver
- Very disturbing and intrusive in my opinion (Especially cosmetic surgery ads)
Advertising of Naver
- On TV, no brand is putting it’s web address on screen, instead a Naver Box appears and the brand name is filled in. This is a powerful model I think. Both part are winning. Don’t know the detail of the deal between the brand and Naver.
Habits
- Koreans are used to it. Hard to change for a “new” player like Google. I believe Naver was first there.
- Everybody uses it. Following the trend is also a habit in Korea.
Nationalism
- Naver is made in Korea.
And you my Korean friends ? Why do you like Naver so much ?
Très intéressant je ne savais pas que la plupart du contenu provenait des bloggeurs.
Il est vrai que beaucoup de sites ont l’air d’être développer en premier lieu pour IE, je me rappel avoir essayé d’acheter quelque chose sur un site e-commerce et les formulaires était tous HS sauf sur internet explorer.
Naver sucks! Try doing any research on a subject and you get the same pages over and over again.
Try making an external site (non-Naver) easily accessible… Good luck. Only those who pay or use Naver services get good ranking. Otherwise you are pushed to the bottom of the shitheap.
Never make the mistake of calling Naver a search engine. It ain’t. It’s a self-serving beast of a web portal.
In summary. Trying to get productive unbiased information from a Naver site is like trying find the girl of your dreams in a whorehouse.
You are right : Naver is not a search engine. It’s a paying directory. But it still has more traffic than Google. For the moment…
As a Korean, may be it’s because most Korean get used in Naver, before get used in google, you may find when google korea launched in korea.. Ha?.
Google is rarely by used Koreans. When I had to do research in school, I always used Naver as well as the rest of my 30 classmates. I think it’s because Naver is kinda like the main search engine, and everybody uses it to post stuff on it, so it’s more easier to find what you need in Korean. (idk if that even makes sense lol) Even though you use set Google language as Korean, the filter isn’t 100% effective so… yeah. And I see some people saying that Naver totally sucks because it has lots of ads and the opinions are biased etc. I don’t think Google is any better with biased opinions, and it’s not like Google is completely ad-free, right? I mean, it’s true that Naver’s opening page is kind of crowded, but that’s how Koreans like it. Plus Naver is more appropriate for kids because you need an “adult” account (you need legal proof that you’re over 19 to have an “adult ” account) in order to view search results on mature topics. Now being in an American community, Google is more comfortable for me, but I think Naver is a better site for Korean people. : )