A Japanese buyer who hears about a foreign product, from a colleague, a conference talk or a news item, usually does the same thing next: types the name into Google with とは (to wa, “what is”) after it. What comes back in Japanese often decides whether the product makes the shortlist. It is also the part of marketing in Japan that a team outside Japan rarely sees, because it only shows up in Japanese.
On October 9, 2026, we looked at it for 30 software companies, the first 30 on the latest Forbes Cloud 100 list. For each we measured how often Japanese users search its name, whether it has Japanese pages of its own, and how many of the top ten Google results for “name とは” are Japanese pages by someone else explaining it. Eighteen of the 30 have Japanese pages. The median name is searched about 4,500 times a month in Japan. Across the 25 results pages we checked, the median was seven Japanese explainers in the top ten, but five companies had two or fewer, for three different reasons. We think the marketing mix follows from those reasons.
The short answer
Digital marketing in Japan is usually planned as a list of channels: ads, social, events, PR. A Japanese buyer often meets a foreign brand through a lookup first, and the lookup is answered by whoever has written about you in Japanese. That means your own Japanese pages, then press, comparison sites, resellers, bloggers and encyclopedias, in falling order of how much you control them.
In our test, widely used tools were explained mostly by Japanese media and users, Grammarly among them, though it has no Japanese pages of its own. Enterprise products were explained mostly by the Japanese companies that resell them. The gaps were elsewhere: names that are ordinary words, companies whose own pages filled the results, and one product searched in Japan with nothing in Japanese to read.
So start by searching your own name in Japanese, the way a buyer would, and build the plan from what is missing. We’d put Japanese pages first. Explanation by others comes next: press coverage, comparison listings, partner pages and articles. Channels that keep customers, such as LINE, come once buyers know who you are.
How we ran the Japanese footprint test
We fixed the rules before pulling any result. The sample is the first 30 companies of the Forbes Cloud 100, Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s top private cloud companies, produced with Bessemer Venture Partners. The latest edition is the 2025 list, published on September 3, 2025; there was no 2026 list when we ran the test. It mixes household names with specialist B2B vendors.
For each company we recorded three things. First, monthly searches in Japan, in Japanese, for its name in Latin letters and, where one exists, in katakana, from Rakko Keyword, a Japanese keyword tool, using its figure for September 2025 to August 2026. Katakana forms that are already ordinary Japanese words were excluded in advance: ガスト is a restaurant chain and ランプ means a lamp. Eight names are also ordinary English words (Stripe, Ramp, Notion and Gusto among them), so their counts include other meanings, and we report the median with and without them.
Second, whether the company’s own site has Japanese-language product or marketing pages, checked on the site itself. A Japanese help center on its own did not count. Third, the top ten Google Japan results for “name とは” on October 9, 2026. We counted pages in Japanese that explain the product or company and are not on the company’s own domains or profiles and not job listings. Resellers and partners count as third parties, because to a buyer they are.
Three name choices were fixed in advance: Anysphere was tested as Cursor, its product, and Grafana Labs and Perplexity AI by their product names. The results check ran for 25 of the 30. For the other five (AlphaSense, Checkr, OneTrust, Plaid and Talkdesk) our keyword-tool credits ran out mid-test, and we did not fill the gap with a different method.
What the footprint test found
Eighteen of the 30 have Japanese pages. The median name is searched 4,540 times a month in Japan (3,350 without the eight ambiguous names), and the median results page had seven third-party Japanese explainers in its top ten. Three companies had none.
| Rank | Company | Japanese searches / month | Japanese pages | Japanese explainers in top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OpenAI | 255,900 | Yes | 8 |
| 2 | Anthropic | 200,500 | Yes | 10 |
| 3 | Stripe* | 49,500 | Yes | 6 |
| 4 | Databricks | 21,700 | Yes | 8 |
| 5 | Canva | 3,330,000 | Yes | 7 |
| 6 | Ramp* | 6,600 | No | 1 |
| 7 | Navan | 1,040 | No | 7 |
| 8 | Anysphere (Cursor)* | 110,880 | Yes | 9 |
| 9 | Deel | 6,600 | Yes | 3 |
| 10 | Notion* | 408,500 | Yes | 8 |
| 11 | Grammarly | 29,000 | No | 9 |
| 12 | Celonis | 2,080 | Yes | 6 |
| 13 | Grafana Labs | 9,950 | Yes | 8 |
| 14 | Netskope | 4,480 | Yes | 8 |
| 15 | Gusto* | 40,500 | No | 0 |
| 16 | Rippling | 1,760 | No | 5 |
| 17 | Tanium | 4,600 | Yes | 9 |
| 18 | Miro | 49,500 | Yes | 7 |
| 19 | Abnormal AI | 460 | Yes | 7 |
| 20 | Attentive* | 2,510 | No | 0 |
| 21 | Cohesity | 2,220 | Yes | 8 |
| 22 | Arctic Wolf* | 810 | Yes | 2 |
| 23 | Flock Safety | 170 | No | 0 |
| 24 | VAST Data | 590 | Yes | 6 |
| 25 | AlphaSense | 790 | No | not run |
| 26 | Perplexity AI | 165,010 | Yes | 6 |
| 27 | Checkr | 90 | No | not run |
| 28 | OneTrust | 1,510 | No | not run |
| 29 | Plaid* | 4,400 | No | not run |
| 30 | Talkdesk | 50 | No | not run |
Having Japanese pages and being explained by others went together, but loosely. Companies with Japanese pages had a median of 7.5 explainers and those without had a median of one. Three companies without Japanese pages still had five or more, and two with Japanese pages had three or fewer.
We also sorted the 148 explainer pages by who wrote them. This sort is our judgment, made after scoring. About half were articles by Japanese media and by companies publishing how-to content, about a third were pages by resellers, distributors and partners, and the rest were individual users’ posts on note, Qiita and Zenn (Japanese blogging and developer platforms), encyclopedia entries and software comparison sites.
Four patterns behind the numbers
The gaps are not one problem, and each pattern below usually calls for a different fix.
Others explain the product in their own words
Grammarly’s site offers German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, but not Japanese. Its name is still searched about 29,000 times a month in Japan, and nine of the top ten results for “Grammarly とは” are Japanese explainers: media articles, bloggers, a university guide. The first result is titled as an explanation of how to use Grammarly and its 危険性 (kikensei, “risks”). Navan, with seven explainers including two written for investors, and Rippling, with five, show the same thing on a smaller scale. When there is demand and no Japanese material, Japanese writers usually fill the gap, and they choose the framing. Not always: Flock Safety, searched about 170 times a month in Japan, has no Japanese pages, and all ten of its results were in English.
The company’s own pages fill the results
Deel has a Japanese entity and Japanese pages; Japanese trade press covered its first year in Japan in November 2022. For “Deel とは”, six of the top ten results are its own pages and profiles, and three are by anyone else. Arctic Wolf, which also has Japanese pages, had five of its own and two by others. A buyer checking either company gets the company’s own description back and little else.
The name already means something else
Gusto, Attentive and Ramp had zero, zero and one explainer. “Gusto とは” returns the restaurant chain ガスト, a bicycle brand and the word itself in Italian and Spanish. “Attentive とは” returns English dictionaries, and “Ramp とは” returns dictionaries, a music act and crypto on-ramps. Their search volumes look healthy, but they are mostly searches for something else. Several companies in the sample may not market in Japan at all, so this is no verdict on their strategy. For a company that does, an ordinary-word name usually needs a Japanese qualifier, such as the katakana name plus the product category, used the same way on every page and in every release.
Resellers often explain enterprise products
For the eight enterprise infrastructure and security companies in the checked group (Databricks, Celonis, Netskope, Tanium, Abnormal AI, Cohesity, VAST Data and Arctic Wolf), 37 of the 54 explainer pages were by Japanese resellers, distributors and system integrators. In four of the eight, a reseller’s page ranked first, above anything from the vendor. In this part of the sample the 代理店 (dairiten, reseller) was the main explainer, which matches our view that in enterprise IT in Japan, your buyer is the integrator.
Abnormal AI shows what an enterprise launch looks like from the outside. It announced the start of its Japanese business on June 25, 2025. About fifteen months later, the top ten for its name includes several reseller pages, a webinar co-hosted with a Japanese security firm and trade-press coverage of the launch.
Marketing in Japan often starts with the Japanese lookup
The test suggests an order for a Japan marketing plan: first the pages that answer the lookup, then other people’s explanations, then the channels that keep customers.
Japanese pages and trust signals
Japanese consumers tend to weigh information in Japanese more than most. In CSA Research’s 2020 survey of 8,709 consumers in 29 countries, 90% of Japanese respondents preferred to buy products with information in their own language, and the Japanese were the least won over by a global brand name, at 50%. In our view, the minimum is a Japanese product page that describes the product in the words Japanese buyers search with, which is a separate job from translating your existing pages. Next to it goes a 会社概要 (kaisha gaiyō, company profile): the table of registered name, address, representative and founding date that many buyers use to check a supplier, described in the Japanese company profile page.
Press, comparison sites and articles
After the lookup, a careful buyer usually wants someone else’s account. Press releases are often the cheapest route, but a release is a record, not coverage: PR TIMES, the largest Japanese press release wire by its own account, reviewed 382,296 releases between January and October 2025, close to 40,000 a month. Coverage comes from journalists you brief. In B2B software, Japanese comparison sites often hold an unusual share of the results, and they appeared in the top ten for five of our 25 companies.
A product that is searched in Japan but explained nowhere in Japanese is likely to lose that searcher. Once the cheaper steps above are in place, a sponsored feature, a PR-labeled Japanese article about your product on one of the sites we run, is one more way to put an explanation where that search ends up.
Resellers, seminars and events for enterprise products
For enterprise products the reseller’s page is often the explanation, so the reseller’s material is your marketing. Give partners Japanese product descriptions, diagrams and customer cases they can publish under their own name. Joint seminars and events, like the co-hosted webinar in the Abnormal AI results, can put both names on one Japanese page that ranks for the product. The partner is likely to get the questions a buyer would ask you, and will need your Japanese answers.
LINE and reviews, once buyers know you
For consumer brands, LINE is often where the relationship continues after the lookup. LY Corporation reports 100 million monthly active users of the LINE app in Japan as of the end of March 2026. In our view, a LINE Official Account keeps customers who already know you; it does not explain you to strangers.
Reviews and influencer posts are explanation by others too, with a legal limit. Since October 1, 2023, advertising that hides that it is advertising, including posts and reviews a business asks for or directs, is stealth marketing and breaches Japan’s 景品表示法 (Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations). The obligation falls on the advertiser, not the person posting. Label everything you pay for or arrange.
Common questions
Three questions marketing teams ask when they see this data.
We already have a Japanese site. Why is that not enough?
Because a buyer doing the lookup is checking you, and a company’s description of itself is the part they can least verify. In our test, Deel and Arctic Wolf both have Japanese pages, and their own pages and profiles took six and five of the top ten places for their names with とは. The next step is outside explanation: press coverage, comparison listings, partner pages and articles.
Should we use a katakana version of our name?
Check both spellings before deciding. In our test, Japanese users searched アンソロピック more than “anthropic” (110,000 against 90,500 a month) and キャンバ nearly as often as “canva,” while グラファナ had 50 searches against 9,900 for “grafana.” We’d let the market choose the spelling. Use the one it chooses and mention the other once on your main pages, so both searches find you.
How can we check our own footprint?
Run the same three checks. Look up monthly searches for your name in Latin letters and in katakana, with a keyword tool set to Japan and Japanese. Confirm that a buyer can reach Japanese pages on your site. Then search your name followed by とは on Google with Japan as the region, and count how many of the top ten are Japanese pages by others that explain what you do.
If the answer is zero, a Japanese buyer who hears your name has nothing to read. If most of the top ten are your own pages, they have nothing to compare.
Working on Japan?
Nihongo Search is published by Amanaut, Inc., a small Japanese SEO and content company in Tokyo working with companies entering the Japanese market. For the search side of doing business in Japan, start with our guide to SEO in Japan; for the content that earns outside explanation over time, see content marketing in Japan. More about how we work.
Sources
The footprint test is our own, including the language checks on each company’s site. Everything else comes from the sources below.
- Nihongo Search, Japanese footprint test of the first 30 Forbes Cloud 100 (2025) companies, October 9, 2026: search volumes from Rakko Keyword (Japan, Japanese, September 2025 to August 2026), company sites, and the Google Japan top ten for “name とは” (25 companies)
- Forbes, The Cloud 100 2025, September 3, 2025
- CSA Research, press release on the 2020 consumer survey, July 7, 2020
- ZDNET Japan, Abnormal AI starts business in Japan (Japanese), June 26, 2025
- ZDNET Japan, Deel’s first year in Japan (Japanese), November 25, 2022
- PR TIMES, corporate site (Japanese), accessed October 9, 2026, and review report 2025 (Japanese), December 10, 2025
- LY Corporation, LINE Official Account service page (Japanese), accessed October 9, 2026; user figure as of end of March 2026
- Consumer Affairs Agency, stealth marketing under the Premiums and Representations Act (Japanese), accessed October 9, 2026
Last reviewed: October 2026.
