For the first time in nine years, Google’s global search market share has begun to decline, according to data from Statcounter and Search Engine Land analysts. The drop indicates the beginning of a large-scale transition of users to alternative search engines: Bing, Yandex, Yahoo.
It is noteworthy that according to Cloudflare, the second main search engine in the world is Yandex. Against this background, Google’s share is also being invested in Russia itself. Let’s figure out how this happened and what it has already led to.
1. Google restricts Russians’ access to new searches for chips.
Russian Google users have access to a number of the company’s features and products, which creates inconvenience and forces them to look for alternatives.
Over the past two years, Google has launched several convenient features, including:
Generalized answer under the search bar
Dialogue mode directly in the search engine to clarify the query
Solving problems in a search engine and using photos
These functions are not available in Russia, but we found similar ones in Yandex:
Search with Neuro – a generalized answer from the AI under the search bar with links to the source
Clarifying a query in dialogue mode directly in Search with Neuro
Solving photo problems in the Smart Camera and search engine
The availability of smart neurotechniques on one platform and inaccessibility on another has led to the fact that Google answers in English more often become no such thing.
Example. To the query “Number of transistors in M1,” Yandex Search with Neuro immediately gave an answer based on information from various sources.
Smart squeeze from Google does not work in Russian.
For our editors, the availability of AI tools in a search engine is an important factor when choosing a platform.
2. Traffic from Google and Yandex is changing.
An important point is the reduction in traffic coming to Google sites. Many webmasters and website owners have noticed a drop in search traffic from this platform.
Like any website, our system has traffic analytics. Accordingly, there is also a display of statistics from where people access iPhones.ru.
We look at this data and this happens:
2022-2023: 37% for Yandex, 61% for Google
2023-2024: 44% for Yandex, 54% for Google
We have 7% growth in Yandex and comply with the Google share limit.
If the trend does not change, in a year the share of Russian search engine traffic will increase from a third to a half.
It has tangible side both for the editors and for you, our readers. We store content on the source where the most traffic comes from.
Previously, articles, headlines and content of posts were adjusted to suit what came up better in Google search. Now we focus on topics that are relevant to queries in Yandex. Of course, a certain balance is still maintained, but the focus is shifting.
It’s not just the volume of traffic, but also in his capacityas well as in the return of the optimization step. Since we started adjusting themes for Yandex, the result has become more profitable – the traffic itself, being Russian-language by default, turned out to be better in a number of key indicators.
3. The market reacts to changes in the quality and availability of search engines.
Since the beginning of 2020, it has become more difficult to find relevant information on Google, which has also spread to the services market.
I provide statistics on the use of two search engines in Russia from several sources. First, check the Yandex.Radar data, the service shows how people use the Internet in Russia, provides reports on search engines, browsers, device types and operating systems:
Indicated in red Yandexblue Google
■ 2019: 57/40
■ 2020: 60/38
■ 2021: 61/37
■ 2022: 63/36
■ 2023: 65/35
■ 2024: 67/33
The iPhone—more precisely, iOS users—plays an equally large role in supporting share.
How to hold iPhone, settings have changed:
In scalar 2021 Google processed 57% of requests in Russia. Then its share began to decline. Yandex then had a share of 43%.
In scalar 2024 year the situation is the opposite. Only 43% of Russians with an iPhone search for information on Google. 57% of requests are processed by Yandex.
According to another source, the Statcounter service, in June 2022, Yandex and Google had equal shares in search queries and processed 48% each.
The graph shows that in 2024 Yandex already occupies 73%Google’s share dropped to 26%.
Trend: Google is not leaving Russia, it is being abandoned.
The transition of users from Russia from Google to Yandex seems to have become the most effective transition to domestic analogues of software and services. Perhaps Google itself, by its own actions alienated iPhone owners in Russia. Yandex, on the contrary, has strengthened itself and added AI capabilities in English, which Google is definitely not going to catch up with.
Where to go in this case for answers to questions? The question is rhetorical. Therefore, we began to visit Yandex more often for quick answers from Neuro. But before I always refused to install a browser and look for a company default.
Statistics prove that I am not alone. Even among iPhone users, for whom Google usually works out of the box, there are millions of defectors.
Source: Iphones RU
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
