Yandex was the leading search engine in Russia in the second quarter of 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 give their preference to homegrown Yandex and Mail.ru. Furthermore, Yandex is the most popular search engine for news reading, as well as the most-visited online resource in the country, with a reach of over ** percent. Besides the search engine, Yandex offers 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 *** million U.S. dollars in 2025. 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 ** 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.

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.

Nearly a third of Russians used search engines to obtain news reports on the internet in January 2023. Further 23 percent of survey respondents named messengers as their main online news source.

As of April 2023, 10.92 percent of the traffic on the international web portal Yandex.com was generated in the United States. Turkey was the second country to generate traffic to this address, accounting for 10.53 of the website traffic, followed by China with 9.46 percent, and only then by Russia, with 6.16 percent. However, the original and Russian-language set domain Yandex.ru a higher traffic originating from its country of origin.

In the Russian e-travel market, online agencies's websites traffic grew the most between August to November 2019 relative to the equivalent period in 2018. Tour search engines and ticket search engines made it in the top three providers with ** and ** percent visitor growth rates, respectively. Train tickets’ online travel agencies recorded negative traffic growth of ***** percent during that period.

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 ** percent. Queries for the "plane tickets" category accounted for **** 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.

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.