The Kiev region leads the way with 58.8% of the total audience, the Chernivtsi region was the least active with only 0.12%. After Kiev, in descending order of popularity were Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lviv and Zaporozhye. These amounted to 30.74% of the total audience.

According to Ukrainian IPs, the search leader in the country is currently Google with 67.15%. Next come Yandex (17.72%), Rambler (3.09%), Bigmir.net (3,08) and the Ukrainian directory Meta.ua (2.90%).

The top queries in the country were: weather, work, chat, the map of Kiev, car markets and news.

Source: CyberSecurity.ru

Each report will also provide a snapshot of search engine usage and activity around the world, which can be compared against for the following year. This should help identify growth or decline for the search engines in each local market.

In the 2007 report we have covered the following 17 countries:

• Bulgaria - Georgi Georgiev (Investor BG PLC)
• China - David Temple (China Search Marketing Tour)
• Czech Republic | Slovakia - Katerina Rotterova (BenedaGroup.com)
• Denmark - Rasmus Sørensen (TLA Media)
• Estonia - Robin Gurney (Altex Marketing)
• Iceland - Kristjan Mar Hauksson (Nordic eMarketing)
• Israel - Gilad Sasson (Search Marketing)
• Italy - Sante Achille (Search Engine Consultant)
• Japan - Motoko Hunt (AJPR)
• Portugal - Nuno Hipólito (Search Marketing)
• Russia | Ukraine - Nick Wilsdon (e3internet)
• South Korea - Ebina Cho
• Spain - Oscar Carreras (WebCertain)
• The Netherlands - Peter Kersbergen (WebCertain)
• United Kingdom - Andy Atkins-Krüger (WebCertain)

The report can be downloaded free of charge by clicking the following link.

 Download Global Search Report 2007 21 Pages (1.3MB)

The latter has announced support for the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) and a series of further enhancements are expected. IDNA enables webmasters to use domain names which exist outside the original 26 characters used for the English-language - but not for too many other languages since many have odd accented characters. Additionally, this brings greater support for asiatic and arabic character sets.

The other new development which is currently being looked at, according to a senior Google source, is the addition of a tool within webmaster tools whereby you can specify the country your site relates to. The countries will be listed in a drop down list - and you’ll almost certainly only be able to choose once country per site.

For a long time it has been a problem if you site was a .com site with no history of activity in a country for Google to pick out the right ‘bucket’ in which to list your site. For some this was an embarrasment - for others a major business hurdle. Matters were worse for those .coms hosted in a country other than the one they were targeting - perhaps for business political or content management system reasons. The result was you might be targeting France with a site hosted in Norway - but not end up appearing in the ‘Pages Francophones’ of Google.fr - even if the language of the site was French.

The simplest way of solving this problem has always been to have local country domains in which case - contrary to what one SES panelist advised in San Jose, the hosting location becomes irrelevant. For many, this isn’t practical - hence the reason why some have chosen to host locally to get around the problem.

These two developments combined will help international SEO specialists manage their projects with less frustration!

Ukraine is promising market for Yandex, where they currently fight for position with Google. Latest statistics show that Yandex has 35.2% market share against Google’s 45.8% for all queries in Ukraine, but only 17.3% against Google’s 66.1% for queries originating from Ukrainian IP’s. There are currently around 3m internet users in the country.

We don’t often think of the Eurovision Song Contest having an effect on the world of international search but anyone who has watched the event will admit that the voting is notoriously political. It seemed no coincidence that the UK received “nil point” after deciding to turn their back on Europe and follow the US into Iraq.

With nationwide voting this poll provides a thoughtful insight into the attitudes, politics and loyalties of each European country. That is why the decision by Ukraine to award the maximum points (12) to Russian singer Dima Bilan was so surprising. Anti-Russian sentiment has been running high since the gas dispute earlier this year, resulting in a tense stand off when Gazprom (Russia’s state gas supplier) decided to turn off supplies for 3 days.

How does this affect search marketing? Well currently Google and Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine are locked in a battle to control the Ukrainian market. In a country which is literally split along pro-West and pro-Russian lines these global events have added a uniquely political edge to the battle. As Arkady Volozh, CEO and Founder of Yandex joked, “Every time Gazprom makes a public statement our market share goes down!”

So can this popular vote by Ukraine indicate a softening of opinion towards Russia, which can convert into more users for Yandex? It does seems a positive step in relations between the two countries, reinforced by Russians awarding Ukraine 10 points for their contest entry.

Search usage data for the country doesn’t show any significant jumps on last month yet but these are early days. It goes without saying that better Ukrainian-Russian politics could mean significant gains in that market for both Yandex and Rambler. With a recent US funded study showing that 45% of Ukrainians prefer speaking Russian the signs are good for them in that market. Is this the turning point they have been waiting for?

During March, the Ukrainian internet audience grew 10% (274′000 new users). Bigmir.net estimates that there are nearly 3 million (2,913,193) internet users in the country. Kiev makes up 50% of this figure. Other large regions are Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Are Donets, Kharkov, L’vov, and Zaporozh’ye.

In terms of search engine usage, their total collected data put Yandex and Google head to head with around 33% each. However if they broke these figures down by Ukrainian IP only, then Google came out on top with 49.65% market share.

Ukraine Search Engine Statistics (total figures)

Ukraine Search Engine Statistics (Ukraine IP only)

Although nearly half of all Ukrainians are reported to prefer speaking Russian, this result is most representative of east Ukraine. This half of the country is lagging behind the west in terms of internet development and access, which would explain the low figures for Yandex on this second chart.

As access grows for this half of Ukraine we can expect Yandex share in the market to be increased by users on their Russian portal. Russian speaking users still seem to favour Yandex over Google.ru when searching RUnet. Both Yandex and Google have developed Ukrainian language portals, although Google seems to have missed a trick by not using the more obvious Google.ua address.

The full report in Russian can be downloaded here in PDF

Ordered by a US governmental institution, the Kiev International Sociological Institute conducted an opinion poll of 2,021 Ukrainians by the end of 2005, the results of which were published by the REGNUM News Agency today.

According to the research, despite the fact that 76.7% of the respondents consider themselves to be Ukrainians and only 18.2% — Russians, 44.2% of Ukrainian inhabitants prefer to speak Ukrainian at home, 42.4% — Russian, 11.3% mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.

On the whole, 45.3% confessed that they find it easier to speak Russian, 44.0% — Ukrainian.

Certainly these findings are supported by the rapid expansion into the country by the Russian mega-portal Yandex. As a marketer looking to break into the Ukraine market, a dual language approach is still strongly recommended.

Source: Regnum

Yandex, Russia's most popular search engine, announced today the opening of their portal in Ukraine. This will provide local search, news and information. As Arkady Volozh, General Director of Yandex explains, "Opening a branch in Ukraine will dramatically speed up our technology development for our users there".

Ukraine has a large Russian speaking population which makes it a natural choice for Russian companies looking to expand. Yandex reports that they already have half a million Ukraine users accessing their existing services each week.

Sergey Petrenko, Director of Yandex Ukraine explains, "Our aim is to develop the market for internet advertising, primarily in search. We will be pleased to work together with the other players in the Ukrainian internet market and local advertising agencies".

Yandex plans further expansion into the Ukraine market in the near future. Their fledgling Wi-Fi service already has a foot-hold in the country and they have been organising publicity seminars; the first held last year in Kiev.

Source: http://company.yandex.ru/news/2005/0920/

Norway and Portugal have been the fastest growers in the last with 19% and 15% respectively. Five eastern European countries score for the first time - Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Ukraine and Slovakia. Top scorers are Finland, Germany and Poland.

XiTi - Etude Xiti Monitor

There are now nearly 152,765 local .ua domains registered; that’s an increase of 2.4% in the last month. What’s more, according to a Sputnikmedia.net study, based on the number of unique users who accessed the internet at least once during June, the Ukrainian internet audience grew by 116,111, reaching 6,449,517. Geographically speaking, Kiev, the nation’s capital, leads the way with 55.43% of all national internet usage.

For those interested in the top searches, they are slightly different than in other European countries. Tourism does not make it into the top 5 in Ukraine, but weather does. In fact, the list as is follows:

1. weather
2. jobs in Kiev
3. jobs
4. chat
5. sonic
6. horoscope

Now, onto the search engines. The leading Russian search engine, Yandex, was the gateway of 32.1% of all traffic onto Ukrainian websites. And out of the Ukrainian search engines, sure enough, Google led pack with 42.9%

But with all this notable progress, there is plenty of unpaved road ahead. Companies, like UaMaster, one of the leading internet marketing companies in Ukraine, are not happy with the progress, but they’re also not sitting put and counting on improvement to fall out of the sky. On May 30th, the company organized the first multinational internet marketing conference in Kiev, Ukraine; an event that was not only much called for, but as many hope, will set off a chain of similar events in the near future.

According to Maksym Khmara, an UaMaster executive, “Another thing that is not very good in terms of the internet in Ukraine, we are isolated and stuck. In neighboring Russia, who although located next door, has by far surpassed our [Ukraine’s] levels, there are a variety of websites that publish internet marketing information. A few times a month, Russia hosts online advertising and SEO seminars. The conferences held in Russia bring together participants from all of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia and other former Soviet Union countries. In Ukraine, these are scarce.”

The idea is to strive towards similar progress and activity seen in neighboring countries, letting the internet evolution else where, seep into Ukraine. “That is why UaMaster is trying to increase interest in the internet not only as a fountain of information, but also as an attractive advertising medium, by organizing professional events, like the latest Internet Marketing conference or the upcoming seminar related to Yandex.”

For those following Yandex’s success in Russia, can follow the search engine to Kiev, Ukraine, where on July 14th and 15th the company’s directors will lead the UaMaster sponsored conference on Internet Marketing, entitled, “Search Advertising and Advertising opportunities in Yandex.” More than anything, this will be a 2-day long informative session to spice up the Ukrainian business world with the necessary enthusiasm and instill confidence in search marketing and online advertising in general, an advertising medium that is taking many new markets by storm, but is still fairly weak in Ukraine.

Participants will include representatives from internet agencies, offline marketing agencies, internet managers of large companies with an online presence in Ukraine, advertising firms, marketing strategists, web design studios and anyone else who is keen on learning more about internet marketing and marketing opportunities at Yandex, still barely explored in Ukraine.

Not only will participants receive a participant diploma, but they will also be able to take a Yandex internet advertising test to become certified internet marketing specialists, according to Yandex’ criteria.

The idea is to get the word out, so for anyone who is interested in attending the conference (in Russian), more information is available on a specially created Internet Marketing in Ukraine site, sponsored by UaMaster.

But for those of you who don’t speak Russian or just can’t make it to Ukraine, Multilingual Search (MSE) will make sure to put Ukraine’s efforts toward internet progress into the limelight, covering the highlights of the upcoming conference in future.

Sources:

AIN

Nevertheless, a significant milestone has been passed with the first .eu ever to function thanks to ICANN placing .eu in the web root directory!

Registrations of .eu domain names will be possible before the end of 2005 - with the registration agreement for registrars being published in all the languages of the EU before the end of May. However, there is a four month sunrise period to enable governments and priority organisations to organise their .eu domain names - so in reality .eu will only be open to all in 2006.

Should you buy a .eu domain name? Our advice is, if you operate in several EU countries - do! It may keep your domain name costs under control, protect your trademarks and mean that you are geographically located in the EU - and that means you should feature in the ‘pages from…’ results. Although that, of course, remains to be seen.

EURid