The outlined trends to increased competition for users among the major search engines gives hope that this will push companies to develop modern tech services and, in the future, will most likely determine the specialization of this or that search depending on competitive achievements.

In order to compete with Google, the Russian search engine "Yandex" will not only have to expand the search base, adding several billion pages in foreign languages, but also spend about $ 15 million on it.

Yandex v Google

Yandex had previously indexed foreign documents and large foreign websites, but now it has decided to expand the base and has already indexed 1 billion foreign pages. This is necessary so that users of Yandex can search not only on the RuNet, but also on foreign resources. For the time being, the company mostly indexes English-language pages, but its database already contains websites in German, French, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. According to the newspaper Vedomosti , now about 15% of all requests coming to Yandex are made in foreign languages.
')
In RuNet, Yandex indexed about 3 billion pages, while at the same time, Google, the largest search engine in the world by the number of queries, last revealed its data three years ago, at that time had 8 billion pages in the database, and the second most popular The world of search engine Yahoo! - 20 billion

"Yandex" wants to keep a share in the market of search engines in order not to reduce revenues from contextual advertising, the newspaper writes. According to the Internet statistics service Liveinternet.ru, the share of Yandex in the number of search requests in RuNet over the past week was 53.7%, Google - 19.7%, and Rambler - 13%.

However, the share of Google in RuNet is constantly growing. According to Liveinternet.ru, taking into account international requests, the share of Google.ru is 30.6%. And according to Comscore, over the past two years, Google’s share in the Russian search segment has grown from 6% to 28%. Vladimir Dolgov, head of the Russian office of Google, explains this with the launch of Russian morphology in 2006. At the end of last year, the company came in second place on requests in Runet, displacing Rambler.

Yandex is provoking serious pressure from Google on search on foreign sites. While Google was looking badly in Russian, many users looked for Russian-language sites on Yandex, and the rest was on Google. Now, when Google is increasingly indexing Runet, this need disappears.

Thus, the publication states, most likely, the task of “Yandex” in the light of the initiated changes will be to retain potential defectors, and not at all the desire to become a global search engine. In this case, the company will not have to invest much in the modernization of the search engine, and it could be about $ 3-5 million. At the same time, Yandex will need $ 12-15 million for additional technological capacity to index the entire Internet.

At the same time, the newspaper notes, indexing foreign sites is not enough to successfully confront competitors. The example of Rambler is indicative. The company has been indexing global Internet pages for seven years, but at the end of last year it lost its second place on Google’s Runet.

Rambler came to his senses

However, one of the largest Russian Internet companies, Rambler, does not want to give up positions to competitors. Her new strategy includes improving the search, as well as a radical redesign of the project. The concept belongs to the new Rambler leadership under the leadership of CEO Mark Opzumer , who began his duties about a year ago. He will have to “pull out” the company from the protracted crisis.

In early April, Rambler will launch a beta version of the new search, which, according to the company's public relations director, Alexander Kovalev, will be more structured. For example, by typing a query in a search engine, the user will receive results by relevant verticals: links to reviews (both in the press and blogs), prices, articles from Wikipedia and news. Now the search engine gives the results in a single list, without structuring the direction of resources.

A Kommersant source close to Rambler noted that the cumulative investment in the development of a new search would be approximately $ 25 million over several years.

A few weeks after the start of this project, Rambler will launch an online video service with search by video content. Now Rambler has a video service Rambler Vision, the content on which visitors download themselves.

Experts point out that new ideas for Rambler are quite interesting. But a structured search, for example, has long been present at Yandex and Google, so Rambler will not gain a competitive advantage due to this service.

ITAR-TASS senior adviser Timur Aitov commented in an interview with RB.ru: “As for the prospects of a new vertical search, the idea is certainly good, but the organization of search by video content seems to be more promising, since there is no such search today, it will be needed in demand. Building such a search engine is time consuming, costly, and I know that many other search resources are moving in the same direction. However, Rambler can succeed here, because video recognition is in no way connected with advances in text analysis. ”

After the launch of these services, Rambler promises to redesign the portal and launch an advertising campaign, on which, according to Kommersant, Rambler intends to spend 10% of the holding's revenue this year - approximately $ 10 million.

How Rambler Lost the Market

In recent years, Rambler, who at the end of the 90s was the leader among Russian search engines, sharply lost ground. According to SUP Nosik, the head of SUP’s blog service, who, incidentally, was president of Rambler from 2001 to 2004, the battle between Rambler and Yandex was lost not now, but at the turn of 1999 and 2000.

Timur Aitov says: “Since then, a whole galaxy of directors and presidents of Rambler has passed before our eyes, each of whom made his own small contribution - I won’t say directly to the collapse, but, nevertheless, clearly not in a clear direction of the portal ".

The result of this policy was sustained rumors about delisting Rambler from the London Stock Exchange. Despite the denials of the press service of the parent company Prof-Media, they continued to regularly haunt the market over the past year.

In addition, in the near future, Rambler may lose an exclusive contract with AOL for servicing and selling ICQ service, which for the past two years has provided the project with stable traffic.

To get out of the vicious circle, the ex-Managing Director and Vice President of Yahoo! Mark Obzumer. The introduction of a new strategy is one of his first initiatives to improve business in the company.

How to get out Rambler

Timur Aitov notes that now there is a clear professional hand in Rambler, all analysts have noticed. In his opinion, today Rambler Chief Financial Officer Arthur Akopyan (who was appointed together with Opzumer) personifies everything new and positive that happens in Rambler. “Fresh ideas on strategy, marketing, positioning and development come from him personally,” the expert comments.

Now Rambler is player number three on the runet search market. Lead "Yandex" and Google. A month ago, Rambler announced its preliminary unaudited financial results for last year. According to a preliminary estimate by Rambler, the company's revenue in 2007 will more than double and reach $ 63-65 million compared to $ 30.6 million in 2006.

For comparison, the revenue of the Yandex leader in 2007 reached $ 167 million, which is almost three times more than the preliminary Rambler result. Forecasts for Mail.ru revenue for last year - $ 80 million.