Yandex Supports Startups

Internet, December 24, 2010. Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has purchased WebVisor technology. The acquisition is a result of the “open days for startups”, a Yandex initiative under the Yandex.Start program.

Yandex launched its startup-support program last summer. The company is primarily interested in developer teams in multimedia, data processing and data structuring, geo information systems and advertising technologies. Yandex.Start is aimed at supporting emerging talent, encouraging young companies and the industry as a whole. Yandex supports startups by offering its technologies (as APIs), computing facilities and expert advice.

To find new and interesting projects, Yandex partners with a number of startup communities in Russia, including the GreenfieldProject, the Glavstart, the Higher School of Economics’ Business Incubator, the Academy of National Economy’s Business Incubator and the Techno Cup at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Yandex gives the most promising developer teams an opportunity to join the Yandex.Start program and to present their ideas and technologies during the company’s open days. The event, which has already taken place twice, gathered a total of 13 participants. WebVisor participated in the September open-day session.

The technology purchased from WebVisor provides visitor behavior analysis (mouse movement, clicks, text copying etc.) and will be integrated with the company’s own visitor statistics tool, Yandex.Metrica. The WebVisor team has joined Yandex to work on merging their technology into the company’s framework. WebVisor will keep servicing existing clients, but the service will not accept new and potential customers.

To learn more and join Yandex.Start, please visit http://company.yandex.ru/public/start/ (in Russian).

About Yandex

Yandex is Russia's largest search engine and a leading Russian internet and technology company. Its mission is to answer any questions web users may have. The company provides easy access to the wealth of local, national and international information through its search and a portal with dozens of free online services. Yandex's websites attract a monthly audience of more than 53 million users from all over the world (comScore, October 2010). Yandex ranks 7th in Top 10 search properties worldwide (comScore, January 2010).

Yandex.Metrica is a web statistics tool, which allows to measure website traffic, visitor behavior and advertising efficiency. Among other things the Yandex.Metrica reports show, where the website visitors come from, reflect their performance on the website and measure the time spent on each web page. The system allows website owners to set up to 10 goals and track their progress simultaneously. Yandex.Metrica registers over 1.5 billion page views daily.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com