Yandex was the leading search engine in Russia from January to March 2025, having accounted for roughly ********** of total user visits over that period. The second-most visited search engine in the country was Google, whose share of visits decreased slightly from the previous quarter. Yandex search usage in Russia Despite the global dominance of Google as a primary search engine, Russian consumers gave their preference to homegrown Yandex and Mail.ru. Furthermore, Yandex was the most popular search engine for news reading, as well as the second-most visited online resource in the country, with a reach of over ** percent. Besides the search engine, Yandex offered a wide range of online services, such as food delivery, maps, and a voice assistant. Mail.ru and Rambler search engines The third most visited search engine, Mail.ru, belonged to the VK Group, one of the most expensive internet companies operating in Russia, whose value was measured at *** billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Rambler, launched in 1996, saw a decline in usage compared to the 2000s. It was a part of the Rambler Group, which consisted of several media organizations, including the online video service Okko and news services Lenta.ru and Rambler News Service. The corporation Sber acquired the group in 2020.

Zen (former Yandex) was the most popular search engine for news reading in Russia in 2023, according to almost a fifth of survey respondents. Further 13 percent of Russians obtained media reports from Google News or were redirected to its links.

As of March 2025, Google represented 79.1 percent of the global online search engine market on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents the lowest share ever recorded by the search engine in these devices for over two decades. Meanwhile, its long-time competitor Bing accounted for 12.21 percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over 2.9 percent each. Google and the global search market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2024, with a market capitalization of 2.02 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2024 with roughly 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over 33 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 21 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

Among the 20 most popular websites in Russia, Google.com had the highest average monthly traffic, at over five billion visits in November 2024. It was followed by the Russian search engine Yandex.ru, with around 3.5 billion visits in the same period.

As of March 2025, Google continued to dominate the global search engine industry by far, with an 89.62 percent market share. However, this stronghold may be showing signs of erosion, with its share across all devices dipping to its lowest point in over two decades. Bing, Google's closest competitor, currently holds a market share of 4.01 percent across, while Russia-based Yandex hikes to the third place with a share of around 2.51 percent. Competitive landscape and regional variations While Google's overall dominance persists, other search engines carve out niches in various markets and platforms. Bing holds a 12.21 percent market share across desktop devices worldwide, as Yandex and Baidu have found success inside and outside of their home markets. Yandex is used by over 63 percent of Russian internet users, but Baidu has seen its market share significantly in China As regional variations highlight the importance of local players in challenging Google's global supremacy, the company is likely to face more challenges with the AI-powered online search trend and increasing regulatory scrutiny. Search behavior and antitrust concerns Despite facing more competition, Google remains deeply ingrained in users' online habits. In 2024, "Google" itself was the most popular search query on its own platform, followed by "YouTube" - another Google-owned property. This self-reinforcing ecosystem has drawn scrutiny from regulators, with the European Commission imposing millionaire antitrust fines on the company. As its influence extends beyond search into various online services, the company's market position continues to be a subject of debate among industry watchdogs and authorities worldwide.

Yandex’s historical maximum net income was marked in 2023 at over 55 billion Russian rubles. In the following year, the company recorded a net profit of 11.5 billion Russian rubles. Understanding the fluctuations Yandex’s remarkable performance in recent years was largely due to the launch of new offline-to-online businesses – Yandex.Drive and Yandex.Eats, along with strengthened positions in search and the further development of cloud sharing technologies. Despite a significant reduction in net income from 2020 to 2021, the company has achieved a 38-percent growth in revenues in that period with a solid income from all the business segments, respectively. The sharp increase in net income in 2022 was explained by Yandex's sales of its News and Zen structures. Yandex in a nutshell  Since its foundation in 2000 in Moscow, Yandex has become one of the largest internet companies in Europe and the leading search engine provider in Russia. By offering innovative services and technologies every year, the company has been accounting for steadily growing revenues each year. A grocery and household goods express delivery service Yandex.Lavka and the development of driverless technologies are some of the latest projects launched by the company. Due to the impact of the Western sanctions on Russia, in 2024, the Russian business was sold to local investors, while the international unit was renamed Nebius.

VK (formerly Mail.ru Group) is one of the largest digital enterprises in the Russian-speaking segment of the internet and the leading e-mail service provider in Russia. In 2024, the company earned a revenue of nearly 148 billion Russian rubles, marking an 18-percent increase compared to the previous year. This was the highest figure during the observed period. Financial highlights of VK VK has been reporting net losses since 2020, and the most significant net loss has been recorded in 2024. Online advertising was the leading segment of the group by earnings, followed by community internet value added services (IVAS) with over 22 billion Russian rubles in annual revenue. As of 2024, the company employed almost 13,000 full-time employees.   VK’s business model The company as it is known to date was founded in 2005. It owns two of the largest Russian-speaking social media platforms, VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki (Ok.ru). As a shareholder of AliExpress Russia JV, the group also operates in the e-commerce market. In 2022, VK sold its international gaming brand MyGames and the delivery service Delivery Club.

Search queries in the "hotel services" category were the most popular searches related to travel industry on the Russian search engine Yandex during April and May 2020, with a share of nearly 29 percent. Queries for the "plane tickets" category accounted for 18.5 percent of all travel-related searches.

The customer survey of March 2020 revealed that for e-shoppers who knew exactly what he/she wanted, the best searching option would be the retailer's website. However, if potential customers were unsure about their future purchase, they would search it via search engines with roughly 40 percent of likelihood.

Search engines generated the largest share of the desktop traffic of the pharmaceutical e-commerce website Apteka.ru, measured at approximately 46 percent as of February 2023. Direct access was the second leading traffic source, with a share of about 45.6 percent. Apteka.ru is the highest earning e-pharmacy in Russia.

Search queries for cottages and houses have increased the most in the non-hotel accommodation category on the Russian search engine Yandex during April to May 2020, compared to the first quarter of the year. Queries for health resorts and guest houses experienced the largest decrease, by over 30 percent each.

As of February 2025, English was the most popular language for web content, with over 49.4 percent of websites using it. Spanish ranked second, with six percent of web content, while the content in the German language followed, with 5.6 percent. English as the leading online language United States and India, the countries with the most internet users after China, are also the world's biggest English-speaking markets. The internet user base in both countries combined, as of January 2023, was over a billion individuals. This has led to most of the online information being created in English. Consequently, even those who are not native speakers may use it for convenience. Global internet usage by regions As of October 2024, the number of internet users worldwide was 5.52 billion. In the same period, Northern Europe and North America were leading in terms of internet penetration rates worldwide, with around 97 percent of its populations accessing the internet.

In 2023, Google's ad revenue amounted to 264.59 billion U.S. dollars. The company generates advertising revenue through its Google Ads platform, which enables advertisers to display ads, product listings and service offerings across Google’s extensive ad network (properties, partner sites, and apps) to web users. Google advertising Advertising accounts for the majority of Google’s revenue, which amounted to a total of 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. The majority of Google's advertising revenue comes from search advertising. Google market share These revenue figures come as no surprise, as Google accounts for the majority of the online and mobile search market worldwide. As of September 2023, Google was responsible for more than 84 percent of global desktop search traffic. The company holds a market share of more than 80 percent in a wide range of digital markets, having little to no domestic competition in many of them. China, Russia, and to a certain extent, Japan, are some of the few notable exceptions, where local products are more preferred.