Google, based on statistics, is probably the most popular search engine in the world today. But Russia is a whole different territory where language and culture is different and Google just can’t seem to penetrate.

What websites do Russian’s visit?

Most probably their own websites if you will ask me. I have no valid statistical study but I will base my findings from 3 websites looking at their ClustrMaps.

Action Online – Business and Technology Blog

This SEO/SEM Blog

Pinoy Isulong

Although these websites above are not really targeted for the Russian audience, it was not specifically targeted for the Chinese audience either. For Indian, Australian and for people in countries in Europe, but you can see still there is quite a large amount of traffic coming from those areas even if these sites are not specifically geo-targetted. But if you check the traffic from Russia, only some occasional one or two dots from Russia will come out.

But for sure the Internet is alive in Russia, with all these Russian SEO friends we have on Digital Point’s forum and also these SEO applications made by Russian programmers, for sure the Internet is alive in Russia. But what websites do they visit? Most probably they visit Russian websites as well.

Language and cultural preferences probably does not make Google the top search engine in Russia

The top visited websites in Russia as reported by Eric Pfanner on the New York Times says the top 3 most visited sites in Russia are Yandex, Mail.ru and Rambler. And based on online advertising revenue, Yandex controls 50% of the market and Rambler is second with 41%. The remaining 9% is for other online ad companies that include Google. Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh also says in this report:

“With real estate, it’s location, location, location,” he said. “On the Internet, it’s technology, technology, technology. We have this homegrown technology that in many cases is better than theirs.”

Ironically, one of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin is a Russian and was born in Moscow in 1973. Unfortunately, Google is having a hard time dominating his mother land.

Comparing Ituloy AngSulong SEO Contest with the previous Isulong SEOph SEO Contest, the first contest was a keyword ranking contest for the keyphrase Isulong SEOph on Google.com.ph only. Today, the Ituloy AngSulong contest is a keyword ranking contest for Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are prizes for each individual search engine. And there is also a cumulative prize who ranks the highest in all 3 search engines.

With this in mind, several Ituloy AngSulong competitors have been building out their own tools for comparative ranking analysis.

• Benj Arriola’s SEOSearchOptimization: Side by Side ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN for Ituloy AngSulong.
• Bloodred’s Top100X3: Side by side comparison and cumulative ranking computation.
• Dennis Agulo’s SEOBunker: Side by side comparison, cumulative ranking, PR, archived results and comments.

I have started on the SEOSearchOptimization and has just felt a bit lazy to continue on. With the MSN/Live API having problems with results being not the same the actual site, I have resorted to reading the RSS feeds but does not seem to reach page 2 of the search results.

Bloodred used the MSN API which has been showing results way different from the actual results. Thus this also makes his cumulative ranking innacurate.

The Goyams creator, Dennis Angulo, knowing the MSN API flaw, scraped the MSN rankings. He also stores his data, archived which prevents him from using the whole API daily limit on Google of 1000 queries a day. The added comments on the site is also very nice which makes his site serve a good link bait.

Based on the current results by looking at them on SEOSearchOptimization, current Yahoo number 1, isulong.seoph.org is also present in the top 10 on Google and MSN. This shows some promising results for a cumulative win for the bonus prize. Writer Marh Gil’s Blogger account marhgil.blogspot.com has high rankings in both Google and MSN which seems to move closer to the cumulative prize. Also moving close to the cumulative prize in Ituloy AngSulong ituloyangsulong.com and news.ituloy-angsulong.info. Although it is only isulong.seoph.org that has entries in the top 10 in all 3 search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN. And the other 3 Ituloy AngSulong entries mentioned here has not yet cracked MSN’s top 10 yet.