How does GEO work in Japan, and what should a foreign company do first?

It depends on the assistant: in our study Google AI Mode relied on Japanese review and comparison pages, while ChatGPT relied on vendors' own websites. On 9 October 2026 we asked both assistants the same 12 questions about business software and services for companies in Japan, six in Japanese and six in English, twice each, and recorded every source the interface showed: 458 sources across 48 answers. In Japanese answers, AI Mode took 82 of its 100 sources from review and comparison pages, and all 100 sources were in Japanese. ChatGPT's Japanese answers took 63 of 122 sources (52%) from vendor sites and 46 (38%) from review and comparison pages.

Review and comparison pages here means Japanese software review platforms such as ITreview and BOXIL, and any page that ranks products, including the おすすめ○選 ("N recommended picks") roundups common in Japanese search. Of the 214 pages in this group, 98 were roundups published on company websites rather than on review platforms. Trade press barely appeared: 5 of 458 sources were media articles, all in ChatGPT, and no government or industry-association page was cited.

Google brought AI Overviews to Japan, with Japanese-language support, in an expansion announced on 15 August 2024, and made AI Mode available in Japanese on 9 September 2025. Our study covers AI Mode and ChatGPT only. It does not measure how often AI Overviews appear on Japanese searches.

Often not: across the six pairs of questions, fewer than half of the brands named in either language appeared in both. The overlap was 28 of 61 brands for ChatGPT (46%) and 29 of 91 for Google AI Mode (32%). We counted each brand once per language across both repeats and treated spellings such as セールスフォース and Salesforce as one brand.

The gap was widest where Japan has strong local providers. Asked in Japanese for a translation company, AI Mode named Japanese firms such as Honyaku Center, Kawamura International and Sun Flare; asked in English, it named international ones such as TransPerfect, Ulatus and Pangeanic, and only 2 of 22 brands appeared in both. For HR and payroll software, the Japanese answers named Jobcan and Office Station, the English ones ADP, Deel, Rippling and Workday, with SmartHR, freee and Money Forward in both. Accounting was the most stable category for ChatGPT: freee, Money Forward and Yayoi in both languages, with NetSuite added in English.

The language of the sources shifted as well, in a different way for each assistant. AI Mode cited Japanese-language pages for all 100 sources in its Japanese answers and for 22 of 122 (18%) in its English answers. ChatGPT cited more Japanese pages in English answers (65 of 114, 57%) than in Japanese ones (57 of 122, 47%), where it often linked to the English pages of vendors such as Asana, ClickUp and CrowdStrike. All 48 answers were written in the language of the question.

The two assistants drew on almost separate pools of websites: of 202 domains in the study, only 18 appeared in both. AI Mode cited the Japanese SaaS comparison sites アスピック (aspicjapan.org, 14 sources), ITトレンド (it-trend.jp, 13) and BOXIL (boxil.jp, 7) most often, along with YouTube (7). ChatGPT's most cited domains were vendors: microsoft.com and moneyforward.com (10 each) and freee.co.jp (9). The review site ITreview (itreview.jp, 7) was the only comparison platform in ChatGPT's top five.

The same split appears brand by brand. Across 20 brands whose own domain we could identify, ChatGPT cited the brand's website in 55 of 74 mentions (74%), and AI Mode in 17 of 65 (26%). For a seller, that points to two separate places to be present: the product's own Japanese pages, which ChatGPT cited directly, and the review and roundup pages AI Mode relied on. The data shows which pages were cited, not why they were chosen.

The most cited domain of the whole study was neither a review platform nor a software vendor. aqpartners.jp, the site of an accounting and HR advisory firm in Japan, appeared 17 times, 12 of them in AI Mode, mostly through English-language guides comparing software for companies in Japan. English questions about doing business in Japan found English pages written from inside Japan.

Not instead of the Latin name. In Japanese answers, foreign brands were written in Latin script in 40 of 43 mentions by ChatGPT and 29 of 32 by AI Mode. The remaining six put a katakana reading in brackets after the Latin name, as in HubSpot（ハブスポット） and TransPerfect（トランスパーフェクト）. No foreign brand appeared in katakana alone.

Japanese brands were written both ways: of 65 mentions, 33 were in Latin script, 24 in katakana, 7 in both and 1 in kanji alone, so names such as freee and kintone sat next to names such as マネーフォワード. The practical step is to keep one Latin name as the main form everywhere and give the katakana reading on your Japanese pages and profiles, so that both forms clearly belong to the same company. Our questions covered business software and services, where Latin names are common; consumer categories may differ and were not tested.

Measure both languages first, then work on the places each assistant cited. The steps below follow from what the study showed. None of them guarantees that a brand will be named, and the order depends on whether your buyers ask in Japanese, in English or both. Our guide to multilingual GEO explains how to run and report separate language tracks.

Re-check on a schedule, because sources change faster than names. We measured overlap between the two repeats as the share of items that appeared in both out of all items in either. For brands it averaged 64% in ChatGPT and 54% in AI Mode; for exact URLs, 10% and 35%. The first brand named was the same in 10 of 12 pairs for ChatGPT and 7 of 12 for AI Mode. One screenshot of one answer is not a measurement; our note on how we measure describes repeats and clean sessions.

On 9 October 2026 we asked 12 questions: six categories of business software and services, each asked once in Japanese and once in English (table below). ChatGPT ran on a free account in Temporary Chat, with memory off and empty custom instructions, between 05:38 and 07:35 UTC. Google AI Mode ran in a private window without a login, with Japan set as the region through the gl=jp parameter, between 07:47 and 11:23 UTC. Each question was asked twice, each time in a new session, giving 48 answers; 47 showed sources, 458 in total after duplicates were removed.

We recorded only the sources shown in the interface and never asked an assistant to list them. Each source was classified by its domain and then by the page itself: a product roundup counted as review and comparison on any site. The language of a source was judged by its title. ChatGPT often showed a domain without the full address, and we recorded the domain without reconstructing the URL.

The browser was outside Japan. ChatGPT offers no region setting, and in AI Mode Japan was set only through the gl=jp parameter, so these answers show what someone asking about Japan from abroad sees; answers for a user in Japan may differ. The study covers one day, two assistants, six business categories and two repeats per question. The brands named are the products the assistants recommended; we did not assess them.