Russian Search Engine Yandex – Google's Largest Competitor in Europe

Yandex is the largest search engine database in Russia. Reports point that it could be the most popular search engine used in Russia with about 44% of the Russian search engine market share.

Much like Google has become a standard word in the English dictionary meaning "search", Russians are used to "Yandex" in a much similar matter.

In fact, comScore reports that Yandex is the Number 2 search engine in Europe. Adding to the competition to Google, Yandex will go for a Nasdaq listing in the fall of 2008.

Yandex (also on http://www.yandex.ru ) was co-founded by Arkady Volozh in late 1990s. Arkady, a mathematics graduate of Gobkin Instute of Oil & Gas in Moscow, created Yandex that soon rose to number 1 in Russia, beating the popularity of Rambler, the leading Russian search engine at that time. In 2007, Yandex reported annual revenue of about $167 million.

This is a sample statistics of the activities on Yandex. Yandex is slowly building it’s services much like Google. It already has an internet payment solution (Yandex Money ), MoiKrug.ru (translated in English, meaning My Circle) a social networking site & is soon to acquire Smilink, a Russian enterprise with expertise in the travel & logistics industry in Russia.

In an interview with Business Week, Google Russia’s head Vladimir Dolgov commented that Yandex has developed an excellent strong search engine. A nice compliment from a worthy competitor.

Reference : More on how to submit your website to Yandex look up Pro Digital Tips .