Josh Catone over at SitePoint reports that Firefox has decided to drop Google as their default search option for Yandex. This will effect all the versions they release for the Russian market. According to Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson, the reason behind the change was a study of Russian user behavior conducted by Mozilla that [...]

[Read more →]

The 2008 Russian Internet or Runet Awards were given away last week in a lavish ceremony held in Moscow. Russian singers and celebrities were among the audience as leading players in Russian internet industry were awarded for their contribution to the development of the Russian segment of the internet. The awards have been running since [...]

[Read more →]

According to Interfax, Googles proposed deal to puchase the contexual ad provider, Begun.ru, for $140m was shot down by the Russian Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) on Thursday. The reason cited has been a lack of clear information on the “individuals who can exert influence on the activity of the Google group, as well as a list [...]

[Read more →]

On the 27th July, Radio Station Ekho Moskvi (Moscow Echo) invited the ex-Managing Director of Rambler for an interview on the latest deal between Rambler and Google. This is an English translation of the show you can watch below: Igor Ashmanov started his interview with answering some questions about his web service, search engine analyzer [...]

[Read more →]

Bloomburg are reporting on the comments made by Vladimir Dolgov, Head of Google Russia, that online ad sales will jump fivefold in Russia to reach $1 billion in 2010. In 2010, Google believes its operations in Russia could be tapping a billion dollar Internet advertising market. 2007 saw Russia grow to a $200 million bonanza [...]

[Read more →]

It’s important to know the main user-agents and search engine spiders in Runet. This can give you information on the indexing of your site, if you understand the various roles each search engine robot plays. It can also allow you to see when your competitors or link partners are cloaking their content. Inserting the following [...]

[Read more →]

Yandex, the leading search engine in Russia, recently launched their own portal for webmasters, similar to Google’s Webmaster Central panel. Once they have verified their website(s), webmasters can access more information on their site’s listing within the Yandex engine. This includes which pages/sections Yandex has indexed, site errors and ingoing/outgoing links (totals plus exact URLs). [...]

[Read more →]

Yandex has announced a new vertical search engine for car sales in Russian, found at: http://auto.yandex.ru/. . They are collecting adverts from all leading Runet car sites and aggregating them within the one search. The information and pictures are updated several times per day and the system can present results closest to the user’s location. [...]

[Read more →]