Google surpasses Yandex in monthly popularity in Russia

Google has now surpassed Yandex in terms of aggregate monthly audience in Russia, according to the newspaper Vedomosti, citing April 2016 data from the market research agency TNS.

According the data, 20.5 million people use Google at least once a month in Russia, whether on computers or mobile devices. The figure for Yandex amounted to 20.4 million users in April and the figure for Mail.ru amounted to 19.3 million users.

Yandex remains the leader in terms of daily audience accessing its services from all types of devices, with 12.3 million people using at least one of its services within a 24-hour period. The social network VK.com took second place with 12.1 million users, and Google finished in third place with 11 million users.

The principal factor contributing to Google’s growth in Russia is its regulation of the Android market, says Yandex's representatives. Based on this information, it can be concluded that Google is increasing its audience largely through the mobile telephone market.

A Yandex representative stated that the leaders of the Russian Internet market are far too close to one another in terms of audience size for any single leader to be identified. Google representatives refused to comment.