Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the first issue of Reform’s International Search Review. Issue number two is now available, as we move north into Russia. Like China, Russia is a large market where Google is not the search engine of choice, playing second fiddle to Yandex.ru. As a result, SEO and general search marketing strategies from international companies looking to expand into Russia often find obstacles here.
For instance, it can be difficult for foreign companies to do PPC advertising on Yandex. Their PPC service is known as Yandex:Direct – which has a user interface for accounts that is entirely in Russian. Unless you have a fluent Russian PPC person on your team (and even then), potential advertisers are advised to let Yandex manage the PPC accounts on your behalf. This is known as the “Yandex.Direct Carefree account” – which their site says will provide you with a dedicated, English speaking account manager who will help you create and run your campaign (assistance with keywords selection, composing the ad text and advertising strategy consulting).
The initial take up of broadband was behind the pace of many other markets, but in the recent years Russia has started to really experience a steadier increase, becoming one of the top countries in regards to take up and usage of Mobile internet usage and Social Networking. Russia is currently the eighth largest country in terms of internet user population, and is set to overtake the UK into seventh place.
Download a copy of the full “Russia Search Review” issue here
Take a look through the PDF and hopefully we can answer any questions about the search market share in Russia, along with the habits of the local internet user population there.
We look at the Yandex natural search algorithm, along with recent changes in Gogo.ru and Mail.ru, which had made an agreement with Google to use their natural search results, but instead opting to build their own algorithm first and using Google’s as a back up. Gogo.ru and Mail.ru do however use Google’s PPC results, which has helped extend its reach (and earnings) there. Considering Google had a 5% market share in Russia only 4 years ago, it has come a long way. But like in China, there are many factors which will try hard to make sure it never crosses the 50% line.
The overall search market share in Russia currently (along with other key stats from the PDF include):
- Yandex – 54.5% (62% when including Mail.ru) / Google 34.5% / Rambler – 1.9% / Bing – 0.4% (Source: Comscore, August 2009)
- 42,000,000 Internet users as of Jan 2010 and only a 33% estimated internet penetration.
- The average user in Russia spent 6.6 hours per month on social networks (highest in the world out of 38 countries that were reported), compared to a worldwide average of 3.7, 4.6 in the UK and 4.2 in the US. (World Metrix / Comscore: July 2009). The top choice of social network was Vkontakte.ru, followed by odnoklassniki.ru and mail.ru – while Facebook was a distant seventh.
- Twitter integration into search results was done on Yandex first in 2009 (before Google or Bing), yet Twitter usage in Russia is still relatively low, holding less than 0.5% of the overall global Twitter market share.
To get more details on this and everything else, download a copy of the full issue here – and let us know any comments / feedback. Contact us, and we’ll get the next issue out to you before anyone else gets it!
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Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform
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