Russia: Yandex Stays Ahead of Google

For those who follow SEO practices in Russia, Google does not premeditate the actions to take in search engine optimization. Yandex is king and stays at the top with nearly 20% more users than Google.

1. Yandex – 54.4% of users
2. Google – 34.5% of users
3. Mail.ru – 7.4% of users
4. Rambler – 1.9% of users
5. Bing – 0.4% of users

In a recent publication, search engine tracking reveals that Yandex stays ahead of Google in Russian search engines. Yandex, Russia’s largest internet company and the world’s second largest non-English search engine, attracts over 12 million active users in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries. Yandex stays in the number one position with the average user making 19.6 searches per month with Google in second with 13 searches per month. That gives Yandex 54.4% of the search engine results and Google receives 34.5%. If you also add Mail.ru’s—powered by Yandex—7.4% of results, that brings the two dominating forces to 96% of most utilized search engines in Russia. In fact, Rambler.ru is down 8% of the market share as users shift over to Yandex.

Main consensus of Yandex’s continued dominance over Google.ru is that Yandex has the grammatical modulation to recognize the Russian language and Google is stilted in this. Yandex has one of the most powerful geographic analysis tools in a search engine, recognizing the different speech patterns of Russian areas to produce more congruent search results.

From an SEO standpoint, producing unique content, titles, and meta descriptions is just as important in Yandex as it is in Google. Yandex rewards strong content by bringing the site forward in ranking. It also can almost read your tone, grammar and vocabulary to place you higher in the search results for inquiries made in your area.

With Yandex in a strong lead position in Russian search engines, designing your site based around their SEO requirements is important, especially if you are conducting business nationwide rather than globally.