Russian site Yandex has replaced Microsoft and Bing as the worlds fourth most popular search engine, processing just shy of 400m more search requests than its American rival.
According to the latest comScore Search report, in 2012 Yandex handled 4.844 billion search requests whereas Microsoft sites (of which Bing accounts for 92 per cent of all search inquiries and include MSN and Windows Live) received 4.477 billion.
Unsurprisingly Google still dominates the industry with 114.73 billion search queries and a 65.2 per cent share of the market. China search engine Baidu comes second with an 8.2 per cent market share, while Yahoo sits in third thanks to a 4.9 per cent share.
So with Google still top of the search engine pile why should businesses turn their attention to Yandex?
1. Yandex is king in Russia
Yandex is the number one search engine in Russia and owns more than a 60 per cent of the market share. In comparison Google can boast only slightly over 26 per cent of searches in Russia while Bing is a non-factor with just a 0.6 per cent share.
2. Russia is Europes number one internet user
According to Econsultancys 2013 Internet Statistics Compendium, Russia has the most internet users in Europe at 68 million, edging Germany into second by 500,000.
3. Russias internet economy is growing
By 2016 the internet is predicted to contribute $75 billion to Russias GDP – which would represent a rise of $48 billion from 2010. Russian internet consumers value search ahead of social networking and news websites.
4. Russians are increasingly reaching for their debit cards
Ecommerce in Russia is predicted to be worth a massive $43 billion by 2016, up from $12 billion in 2010.
5. Turkeys expanding internet market
Yandex is targeting Turkeys rapidly increasing internet market. Turkey, fifth for internet users in Europe with 36.5m and the sixth largest web search market, is currently dominated by Google. However Yandex aims to increase its market share in the country to 35 per cent in five years from todays 1.4 per cent.
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