Embracing the Personal and Trivial.(Business; South Korea)(Cover story)

Byline: B.J. Lee

How Naver became the country's biggest search portal.

In most parts of the world, the conventional way of finding the best fish restaurant in town might be to consult food magazines or your friends. In South Korea, millions of people visit Naver, the country's biggest Web portal, instead. Naver has developed a search engine that is designed to answer any question, no matter how personal or trivial -- how to remove a kimchi stain from your pants, for instance, or what plastic surgeon can offer the best nose job.

The expertise comes from Naver's 28 million users. Since 2002, when the portal launched its knowledge-search service, it has collected a database of 70 million questions and answers, which it draws upon whenever a new query comes along. The early start has allowed Naver to grab 75 percent of South Korea's portal market. More than half of Korea's 48 million people have logged on. They make 100 million queries each day.

Naver is a case study in how local portals, particularly in non-English speaking countries, can beat global giants like Google by taking local culture and customs into consideration. By tapping the enthusiasm of South Korea's Internet, Naver grew into the world's fifth largest portal in terms of search-engine queries, according to comScore, a U.S. Internet information provider. Google, by contrast, ...