For marketers and SEOs interested in succeeding on a global scale, knowing the major international search engines should be a priority. Today, we will be devoted to the overview of the Russian search engines. Don’t miss the opportunity to spread your content and presence in the Russian-speaking world. 

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What Is the Most Used Search Engine in Russia?

The most used search engine in Russia since 1997 is Yandex. But since Google search engine has entered the Russian market in 2006, then Yandex became the second most popular Russian search engine since 2020.

According to Statcounter, Yandex search engine is ranked as the most popular search engine in Russia with a rate of 54.73%, compared to Google that ranked as the second most popular search engine in Russia with a rate of 43.47%. These 2 giants are followed very far by Bing search engine with a rate of 1%.

Search Engine Market Share in Russia – February 2023

Please keep in mind that this figure varies based on the source. Some sources have Yandex’s market share at over 50%, and they agree that Yandex is more popular than Google in Russia. Some Russians may prefer Yandex because they simply don’t trust American companies. Others may choose it to support a Russian company over a foreign one.

#1. Google

Google Search Engine is the most popular search engine in the world. Almost 70 percent of the Search Engine market has been acquired by Google. The tech giant is always evolving and looking to improve the search engine algorithm to provide best results to the end-user.

The number of Russian Google users is strongly influenced by mobile devices with Android which dominate among Russian-speaking users, especially the younger ones.

#2. Yandex

Like Yahoo! Japan, Yandex is so much more than a search engine. It offers email, cloud, and online payment services, streaming music, news aggregation, and live traffic maps. 

Yandex functions mostly like the other popular search engines.

You type in a search phrase, hit enter and then you see a search results page with a bunch of blue links, URLs, and descriptions.

Depending on the search query, you may also see images, videos, and other types of search results.

Here’s what shows when I type in “SEO”:

According to Alexa, Yandex.ru is among the 50 most popular websites on the Internet with a ranking position of 4 in Russian.

Yandex is also very popular in many other countries other than Russia. This includes many of the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, an organization of many countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

Marketing and SEO in Russia

Russian Federation has a huge territory with the population of more than 146 million people. This is your potential audience and an excellent opportunity for business development. Although Internet commerce is actively developing in Russia, it is not oversaturated yet, so there is a good chance to tackle a business niche. 

The main search engines in Russia are Yandex and Google. They have about the same amount of traffic – 60-70 million visits every day! To do marketing in Russia, we recommend using contextual advertising and site optimization in combination. SEO in Yandex and Google will give a long-term result and PPC will ensure this result to be fast.

If you are planning to build website and content in the Russian language, it’s essential to know that Russian is quite complex with various grammatical phenomenon to be adept. So, having a Russian native or good speaker or writer can boost your SEO strategy.

Here are more Yandex ranking factors.

• Geo-Targeting
• Meta Data
• User Engagement
• Content
• Domain age
• Commercial factors
• Mobile-Friendliness
• Indexing time
• Authority

If you are planning to start a business or have already started, planning to target Russia, then Yandex is the best way to get started.