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Search Engine News : Microsoft to renew link with Baidu

By Andrew Redfern @ 5th July 2011 11:53 am Yandex

In a statement issued on Monday Microsoft and Chinese language search giant Baidu have announced partnership in the Chinese search sector.

Baidu is by far the biggest web company in China and will link-up with Microsoft’s Bing search engine to provide results for English-language searches. This means that English search queries entered to Baidu will be directed to a Bing search results page.

Baidu dominates search in China with more than 75% of the market and saw profits double last year. Google by comparrison is struggling to establish itself in the Chinese market. It clocks in with 20% of the market and has fallen fall out state regulators on several occasions.

Microsoft’s deal will neatly sidestep suich problems because control of the searched for query will still remain firmly with Baidu with Bing effectively operating under Baidu’s control.

Quoted on the BBC’s Technology pages Dong Xu, an analyst with Analysys International, said “The co-operation between Baidu and Microsoft will further strengthen Baidu’s dominance in China’s search engine market, and will also make Google’s business in China more difficult”

This move will add further pressure on Google’s Chinese operation with many analysts already seeing a retreat from sector from the a company that is the undisputed king of the search sector.

China has proved an impossible nut to crack for Google (with the exception of Hong Kong). In other markets such as Singapore and Japan Google has gained market share but it seems that entrenched local search engines such as Baidu and Yandex in Russia can still hold out against it’s dominance of the search engine market.

The Yandex School of Data Analysis – Graduation

By Andrew Redfern @ 23rd June 2009 9:50 am Yandex

Yandex celebrates the first graduation at Yandex School of Data Analysis which was founded in 2007. Over 30 students graduate from the two-year Master program; some of them will be offered to join the Russian Search Engine Yandex.

Yandex School continues the traditions of the school of data analysis originated in Soviet Union in the 60-70′s. Russia’s own search technologies that exist today largely owe to this. The School’s mission is to revive the environment that may nurture new talents.

During the two years, the students were studying different methods of data analysis and computer science which are not included into University programs. While studying, most students were also getting trained in Yandex. Some of them have already been employed by the company as developers.

“Development of automatic geographic classification of websites”, “Classification of users based on their search behavior” or “An industrial-scale filter of unwanted content” are some of the topics of graduation thesis.

The two-year program is offered to the students for free. It is comprised of series of full-time evening classes taught by professors of national and foreign universities: M. Babenko, E. Bunina, A. Chervonenkis, A. Raigorodsky, E. Schepin, A. Shiryaev and many others. The school is led by Ilya Borisovich Muchnik, Professor at Rutgers University.

Yandex School of Data Analysis works together with the leading Russian universities. Several graduating students are in their final year at the Data Analysis Masters program of the Innovations and High Technology Department of the MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology).

In 2008, Yandex Data Analysis School together with the State University – Higher School of Economics (SU-HSE) launched the “Internet Data Analysis” major at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics within their Master’s program “Mathematical Modeling”.

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Russian Search Engine Improves User Security

By Andrew Redfern @ 16th June 2009 5:31 pm Yandex

Russian Search Engine Yandex has improved its proprietary online payment system (Yandex.Money), and it now offers a new way of protecting user payments: the new option “Strengthened Authorization” allows users not to enter their Yandex.Money password any longer.

Now, instead of the password, users can enter a one-time code while making their online transfers.

It is well known that the weakest part of any modern, well-secured system is a user itself. He can accidentally unveil his password to a cheater or make an online payment through an infected computer.

To start using the new feature, a user will need to download a specific table of codes right from the website, or get it by courier. To confirm any of user transactions, the system requires entering a code from specific table cells. That means that every time making payments, a user enters a unique code that can’t be stolen or lost. To download the new feature, please go to the Yandex.Money website.

“Strengthened Authorization” is just one of the many improvements aimed at increasing user security in the system. For example, Dr. Web antivirus (first month for free for Yandex.Money users) helps users keep their computers free of viruses that intercept login information and send it to cheaters. While transferring money inside the system, the Patronized Payment tool protects users from sending money to the wrong user account.

Using bank cards of Alfa-Bank and Russian Development Bank, users’ personal information does not get transmitted over the Internet. Besides, Yandex warns its users of possible ways of cheating and, since recently, of potentially malicious web resources.

Currently, the number of e-wallet owners in the system exceeds 3 million with the daily number of transactions topping 50,000.

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Yandex’s MoiKrug Service Adds Companies Section

By Andrew Redfern @ 4th June 2009 9:29 am Yandex

MoiKrug – a professional networking, recruitment and employment service – catalogues employers. The service presents a new category Companies, which shows pages for each employer with information about open vacancies, current employees and their career moves.

The MoiKrug users can contact people working in a certain company to find out what they need to know first hand.

Networkers on MoiKrug establish professional relationships by sharing their job and place of employment in their profiles, which they normally update. Information in users’ profiles allows MoiKrug to keep track on personnel movements between companies.

The new Companies category is another tool that helps networkers to seek employment through their personal contacts: a logged in user first sees records of the companies whose employees are direct or indirect connections on the user’s contact list.

Today, more than three million people have personal profiles on MoiKrug. A company gets to the catalogue as soon as enough people working at this company set up profiles on the service. Currently, the website has over 1,000 company records.

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Alexey Tcharykov Wins Yandex Cup Winners Cup

By Andrew Redfern @ 3rd June 2009 12:01 pm Yandex

The only Yandex Cup Winners’ Cup game took place today. Alexey Tcharykov won the title of the “Winner of the Cup Winners’ Cup”.
Seven champions of previous years met for the only and final Cup Winners’ Cup game.

The players had 90 minutes to find answers to the Russian-language questions on the Web. The set of questions was unlimited, and the winner managed to crack 32 of them.

“Today was the battle of the strongest,” states the project manager Ksenia Chanchikova. “It had to take a lot of effort to break the defense built up by the contenders who confidently kept threatening on counter attacks. There wasn’t a clear leader right until the dying moments of the game”.

The Champion of Champions Alexey Tcharykov is the winner of the Fifth Yandex Cup, a four-time participant in the Cup’s finals and a two-time winner of the Cup’s first rounds. He was born in Moscow in 1979.

The champion is a keen musician with an honors degree from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. The author of over a hundred web-projects, he has been online since 1996.

The Cup in Internet search is a competition started by Yandex in 2001. Since then, the Cup’s tournaments have gathered various audiences in various regions. Last year, the Yandex Cup was held for the last time.

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iCrossing Partners with Russia Search Marketing Agency

By Andrew Redfern @ 16th April 2009 11:33 am Yandex

iCrossing today announced a partnership with Ingate, one of the largest search engine marketing agencies in Russia. Together, the companies will manage and develop international search engine marketing campaigns for global brands in Russian markets.

Currently, iCrossing manages paid and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns in 21 languages, in more than 25 countries around the world. Working with Ingate, iCrossing will now have access to search capabilities across Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which includes 12 countries with more than 300 million people.

Founded in 2000, Ingate provides search engine marketing and strategy services to Russia’s online market, which has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe. As one of the largest and most innovative digital marketing service and technology providers in Russia, the agency serves more than 200 top brands, including Procter & Gamble, PricewaterhouseCoopers, L’Oreal, Peugeot and Honda.

“iCrossing has a strong reputation for search leadership and innovation,” said Nikita Androsov, chief executive officer, Ingate. “Their strong global presence, experience working with global brands and unique approach to search-informed digital marketing makes them a perfect partner.”

“Ingate’s technical capabilities and understanding of the market align perfectly with iCrossing,” said Don Scales, president and chief executive officer, iCrossing. “This partnership helps support our global offerings for our international clients.”

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Yandex.Maps launched integrated world map with integrated search

By Andrew Redfern @ 15th April 2009 6:39 pm Yandex

Now, instead of separate maps of specific cities and countries, Yandex offers its users one single map to “travel” from Chukotka to Seattle. The updated Yandex.Maps service allows searching for a geographic object in the whole world. For example, the service finds Don River as in Russia, so in Great Britain or France.

The search results are ranked based on how far each particular location is from the location on the current map fragment.

The updated Yandex.Maps also allow to make synonym searches. The traditional “Piter” (a well-established nickname for Saint Petersburg) or “Minvody” (the name traditionally used for Mineralnye Vody) takes the user, correspondingly, to the Russian Northern Capital or to the famous spa resort. And if a user makes a slip, Yandex.Maps suggest the correct spelling and show the right link (for instance, “Versailles” for “Verailles”).

In addition, Yandex.Maps can now understand the names of many foreign cities as they are spelled in local languages. Yandex.Maps users can now find Lithuanian Liepaja or Austrian Großweikersdorf without having to check how they should spell these names in Russian.

The integrated map has become a new technological platform for Yandex.Maps to develop further. Developers and webmasters can use the updated map service via Yandex.Maps API (http://api.yandex.ru in Russian).

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