To launch Google Ads in Japan, target the country with the Presence option, write ads, keywords and landing page in native Japanese, in the scripts that internet users in Japan type, and check your account address for billing. Yahoo! JAPAN runs its own ad platform: a Google Ads campaign does not cover its ads. The sourced facts are in the facts table at the top of the page.
Key takeaway: Launch a separate campaign for Japan, in native Japanese and in several scripts, read the Japanese Google results page of each keyword before you bid, and decide separately whether Yahoo! JAPAN deserves its own account.
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official languages | Japanese: the Court Act (Article 74) requires its use in the courts | Court Act, Article 74 (Japanese Law Translation, official government site) |
| Languages Google Ads supports | Japanese (code ja). English, Chinese (simplified and traditional) and Korean are also among the languages Google Ads supports | Google Ads API, language codes |
| Currency | Yen (JPY): Article 2 of the Act on Currency Units sets the yen as the unit of face value, in whole multiples of 1 yen | e-Gov, Act on Currency Units and the Issuance of Coins (Article 2) |
| Search engines (share of searches) | Google 59.27%, Bing 31.41%, Yahoo! 7.61% (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Mobile vs desktop | Desktop 51.83%, mobile 45.78%, tablet 2.39% of page views (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Google Ads billing entity | Google Japan G.K., which invoices as a reseller of the services for accounts with a business address in Japan | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| VAT on Google Ads | For accounts with a Japanese business address, ad sales in Japan are subject to the Japan Consumption Tax (JCT), invoiced by Google Japan G.K. Google notes that it cannot advise on tax matters | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| Country VAT rate | 10% (standard consumption tax rate since October 1, 2019: 7.8% national and 2.2% local). Reduced rate of 8% for food and drink excluding alcohol and dining out, and for newspapers by subscription | National Tax Agency of Japan (NTA), “Consumption Tax rate” |
| Country-specific Google surcharge | No country-specific surcharge in Google's list: Japan is not on it | Google Ads Help, “Jurisdiction-specific surcharges” |
| Yahoo! JAPAN: an ad platform separate from Google Ads | Yahoo! JAPAN search ads are bought from LY Corporation, by opening an account on its own LINEヤフー広告 検索広告 service (formerly Yahoo!広告, renamed on April 1, 2026) | LINEヤフー for Business (LY Corporation), opening a LINEヤフー広告 account |
| Online gambling | Allowed only for gambling-related lotteries and sports betting, and only for state-licensed operators | Google Advertising Policies, “Gambling and games” |
| Golden Week (national holidays) | April 29 (Showa Day), May 3 (Constitution Memorial Day), May 4 (Greenery Day) and May 5 (Children's Day) are public holidays. A holiday falling on a Sunday moves to the next non-holiday day, and a day between two holidays becomes a holiday | Cabinet Office of Japan, national holidays |
| Year-end and New Year (government offices) | December 29 to January 3, days off for government offices, in addition to Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays | e-Gov, Act on Holidays of Administrative Organs (Article 1) |
Data verified on . Each value was read on its source on the date shown. It may have changed since: the source prevails.
One campaign per country and language keeps budgets, bids and reports readable. In the settings, pick Japan as the location and the Presence option, which targets people located in Japan, rather than Presence or interest, which also reaches people who are only interested in the country.
For a nationwide campaign, write ads, keywords and landing page in Japanese: Google matches ads to searches based on their language. For foreign visitors or residents, create a separate campaign or ad group, with ads and keywords in English, Chinese or Korean. The facts table at the top of the page lists the languages Google Ads recognizes.
Start from Keyword Planner set to Japan and Japanese, not from a translation. For each idea, note the possible scripts (kanji, hiragana, katakana, Latin letters). Our guide on how to choose Google Ads keywords covers the method.
For each keyword, open the Google results page from Japan, in Japanese, and look at the ads, the pages that rank and the local block. The Should I Bid intent analysis does this reading keyword by keyword and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict.
Have the ads and the landing page written, or at least reviewed, by a native speaker of Japanese. Show your prices in whole yen and delivery, return or service terms that apply in Japan.
Check your account's address: Google Japan G.K. invoices accounts with a business address in Japan, with the consumption tax. An account based elsewhere reads the section of its own country. Ask your accountant what is recoverable.
Some sectors have country-specific rules. Gambling, for example, is only allowed in Japan for gambling-related lotteries and sports betting, with a state-licensed operator. Read Google's policy page for your sector before you write.
Run a capped test budget, read the search terms report and add as negatives the scripts that bring clicks with no buying intent. Then decide, with those results, whether a LINEヤフー広告 account for Yahoo! JAPAN is worth the effort.
For Search, language is decided by your ads and your keywords: write them in Japanese. Google removed the language setting from Search campaigns: ads are now matched based on their language, and Google gives priority to ads in the language of the search term. To reach your audience, you keep the geographic location, meaning the country or a region. One campaign, or at least one ad group, per language remains the most readable structure. The facts table at the top of the page lists the languages Google Ads recognizes, with English, Chinese and Korean next to Japanese: they only make sense to speak to foreign visitors or residents, with ads and keywords written in those languages.
Japanese is written with several systems at once, so one keyword often has several faces. According to Wikipedia's article on the Japanese writing system, modern writing combines kanji, characters of Chinese origin, and kana, meaning hiragana and katakana. Katakana is mainly used for foreign names and loanwords, and Latin letters are used too, for example for acronyms. The word for apple can be written 林檎 in kanji, りんご in hiragana or リンゴ in katakana. In IT you also see variants in how a word ends, such as サーバー and サーバ.
Do not assume Google will merge all those variants into one keyword. Google Ads Help on keyword matching describes matching based on the meaning of the search, but the help page on negative keywords says negatives do not match close variants. So find in the search terms report the scripts that really trigger your ads, then add the missing ones, as keywords and as negatives. Our comparison of negative keyword tools helps you manage those lists over time.
Japanese does not put spaces between words, so a keyword list cannot be carried over word for word. Wikipedia says Japanese is normally written without spaces between words. A French or English list, cut into short words, cannot be copied as it is. Rebuild it from Keyword Planner set to Japan and Japanese, then check on Japanese Google that each search shows buying intent rather than articles or definitions.
Have the ads and the landing page written by a native speaker of Japanese. A machine translation does not judge tone, politeness level or the choice of script. A native review also keeps your brand and product names in the form your customers type. The list below sums up the variants to test for each keyword idea.
Google does not have the search market to itself in Japan: the facts table at the top of the page shows a clear share for Bing and for Yahoo! JAPAN. A Google Ads campaign only reaches searches made on Google. It covers neither Bing nor Yahoo! JAPAN. Keep that in mind before you set volume goals.
The real particularity of the country is Yahoo! JAPAN: it has its own search ad platform, run by LY Corporation. According to LY's official page for advertisers, search ads show in Yahoo! JAPAN results based on the keyword typed, and you only pay per click. The service is called LINEヤフー広告 検索広告 and replaces the former name Yahoo!広告: you will find it under both names in older guides.
So a Google Ads campaign does not put you on Yahoo! JAPAN: to advertise there, you need to open a LINEヤフー広告 account. LY's account opening page describes the steps: a business ID, a LINE official account, a business manager account for which a Japanese corporate number and the site address are requested, then the advertising service details. Google itself treats Yahoo! JAPAN Ads as a separate platform: in the Search Ads 360 help, copying a campaign from Google Ads to Yahoo! JAPAN Ads is a copy operation to another destination. For a foreign advertiser with no presence in Japan, ask LY, or an agency that works with it, what is possible before you budget for this channel.
LY also says it relies on Google technology for Yahoo! JAPAN search. Its privacy center states that LY Corporation uses the search engine and the search-linked ad delivery system of Google LLC. For the advertiser, the process does not change: you buy from LY, with its own account. Read its advertising rules separately from Google's, and do not assume that an ad approved by Google will be approved by LY.
The facts table shows that desktop weighs more than mobile in page views in Japan. So do not build your landing pages for mobile only: open them on both types of device. After the first days, look at the device report of your own account: the split of page views in a country says nothing about the split of your customers.
The company that invoices you depends on your account's address, not on the country where you advertise. In Google's page on taxes by country, the Japan section says Google Japan G.K. issues invoices as a reseller of the services, and that this affects accounts with a business address in Japan. For an account based elsewhere, the section of your own country is the one that applies to you.
For the accounts concerned, the Japanese consumption tax applies to ad sales. Google's page says so and reminds you that Google cannot advise on tax matters. The facts table gives the standard and reduced rates published by the Japanese tax authority. Ask your accountant whether this tax is recoverable in your case: it depends on your status and your country.
Google adds no regulatory surcharge specific to Japan. Google's list of jurisdiction-specific surcharges names several countries, and Japan is not one of them. So your test budget needs no local markup, unlike what you would see in some countries on that list. Read the page again before a big spend: it can change.
The yen is the national currency, and the law knows no value below the unit. According to the Act on Currency Units, the face value of a currency is a whole multiple of the yen, and smaller subdivisions only serve as units of calculation. So show your prices in whole yen, with no decimals, in your ads and on your pages. Your Google Ads account keeps its own billing currency, chosen when it was opened: that is a separate matter.
Google regulates gambling country by country: in Japan, the list of allowed products is short. Google's page on country-specific rules lists, for Japan, gambling-related lotteries and sports betting, provided the operator is state licensed. Other forms of online gambling are not listed there as allowed. If you work in this sector, launch nothing before you have read the whole page, including how to apply for authorization.
Google's rules vary from one country to another and from one sector to another. Health, finance, alcohol, regulated products: open Google's advertising policy page for your sector and look for the mention of Japan before you write the ads. A rejected ad delays the launch and skews your first results.
To see who already advertises from Japan, read competitors' ads before you choose your messages. Our guide to the Google Ads Transparency Center explains how to filter ads by country, and the one on who bids on your keywords compares the other methods. Have what you find translated by someone who reads Japanese: an ad you cannot understand teaches you nothing.
The national holidays of late April and early May, grouped under the name Golden Week, form a run of days off that can grow longer. The Cabinet Office lists these holidays, and the facts table at the top of the page gives their dates. These may be days when your customers are not working, and when your own team, your carriers or your customer service can be away.
The law adds substitute days: the real calendar changes from one year to the next. According to the Cabinet Office page, a holiday that falls on a Sunday moves to the next day that is not a holiday, and a working day between two holidays becomes a holiday too. The exact length of the break therefore depends on the days of the week: check the official list of the year before you set budgets and schedules.
Do not guess the effect on your searches: measure it. Open Google Trends set to Japan, compare your keywords around those days over several years, and note whether demand rises, drops or shifts. Then decide whether to raise, cut or pause your budgets, depending on what you deliver and who answers your customers during those days.
Year-end is another moment to watch. The Act on Holidays of Administrative Organs makes the year-end and New Year period days off for government offices, in addition to weekends and public holidays. That law only covers government offices: it says nothing about private companies. If your customers are public services, expect a slowdown; otherwise, check in Google Trends.
Choose Presence if your offer is only delivered in Japan. According to Google Ads Help on geographic targeting, the broader Presence or interest option also reaches people who have shown an interest in the targeted place without being there. For an offer limited to the country, those clicks cost you money and are very unlikely to become customers.
Do not copy the structure of a campaign from another country. One campaign per country and language keeps budgets, bids and reports readable. In Japan, add one layer: if you test several scripts of the same keyword, name your ad groups by script, to see which one pays off.
Do not confuse the Japanese Google page with the one from your home country. Ads, ranking pages and local results change with the country and the language: open the results page from Japan, in Japanese, before you bid. Our guide to search intent in Google Ads explains how to read that page.
Reading the Japanese Google page keyword by keyword is the job of Should I Bid. Its intent analysis reads the Google results page in the country and language you choose, among 50 countries, then returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100, and recommends negatives. It reads Google, not Yahoo! JAPAN. The tool works with credits: see pricing.
Create a dedicated campaign that targets Japan with the Presence option. Write ads, keywords and landing page in native Japanese, because Google matches ads based on their language, and test the scripts (kanji, hiragana, katakana). Show prices in whole yen, check the rules for your sector, then run a capped test. Decide separately about Yahoo! JAPAN, which has its own ad platform.
Yes, in native Japanese. One word can be written in kanji, hiragana, katakana or Latin letters, and internet users do not all type the same form. Start from Keyword Planner set to Japan and Japanese, find the scripts in the search terms report, then add the missing ones, as keywords and as negatives.
No. Yahoo! JAPAN has its own search ad platform, run by LY Corporation under the name LINEヤフー広告 検索広告, formerly Yahoo!広告. You have to open a separate account there, and its account opening page asks, among other things, for a Japanese corporate number. Test Google first, then decide whether this second platform is worth the effort for your offer.
For an account with a business address in Japan, Google Japan G.K. issues the invoices as a reseller, with the Japanese consumption tax. For an account based elsewhere, the section of your country in Google's page on taxes applies. Google does not give tax advice: ask your accountant. The rates are in the facts table at the top of the page.
It groups national holidays of late April and early May, and the law adds substitute days depending on the calendar. Do not assume whether demand rises or drops: compare your keywords in Google Trends set to Japan, then adjust budgets, schedules and customer service. The dates of the holidays are in the facts table at the top of the page.
Yes. Should I Bid reads the Google results page for the country and language you choose, among 50 countries, including Japan and Japanese. It checks that page against your offer and returns, for each keyword, a Bid, Test or Skip verdict with a score out of 100. It reads Google, not Yahoo! JAPAN. You can try it with free analyses: see pricing.