The Russian search company that has had little difficulty fending off Google in its homeland is also doing rather well financially. Today, Yandex announced its 2010 financial results, and the company saw its revenues increase by an impressive 43 percent compared to 2009.
That puts Yandex’s revenue for 2010 at about $410 million, which is a tidy enough sum. As for some other achievements, an official announcement explained, "Revenues from contextual advertising grew 45% year-over-year."
Also, the number of Yandex’s advertisers increased by more than 40% on a year-over-year basis, totaling around 180,000 in the end.
Meanwhile, according to the Russian Association of Communication Agencies, the overall Russian online ad market grew by just 37 percent between 2009 and 2010, putting Yandex – which controls roughly a 64 percent share of the local search market – ahead of the curve in almost every respect.
All this led Arkady Volozh, Yandex’s CEO, to state, "The highlight of 2010, as we see it, is that by constantly improving our product quality we managed to increase our share in the search market. The considerable revenue increase we report this year reflects two important trends – a post-crisis revival of the small and medium-sized businesses and a shift in advertising expenditures from other channels towards online advertising."
Last week, Volozh gave an interview indicating that he thinks Google and Facebook will continue to trail local companies in Russia, as well.