We are the leading internet company in Russia, operating the most popular search engine and the most visited website. In 2010, we generated 64% of all search traffic in Russia and were the largest Russian internet company by revenue. In Q3 2011, our average monthly search share was 62.7%. In September 2011, our yandex.ru website attracted over 42 million unique visitors. We also operate in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Our mission is to answer any question internet users may have. To that end, we utilize our capabilities in applied mathematics and data analysis and our in-depth knowledge of the languages, cultures and preferences of internet users in our markets to develop advanced search technology and information retrieval services. We also aggregate and organize extensive local, national and international content and offer a broad range of additional services. Our search and many of our services are location-based and are available in versions tailored for mobile and other digital platforms and devices.
Benefiting from Russia’s long-standing educational focus on mathematics and engineering, we have drawn upon the considerable local talent pool to create a leading technology company. For over 20 years, our founding team has been developing and optimizing search technology, which has formed the core of our business and helped Yandex become one of the best known brands in Russia. Our users are our first priority, and we are committed to advancing our technology to continuously improve their internet experience.
Our search engine uses our proprietary algorithms to provide relevant results, which we structure and present in an editorially neutral and user-friendly manner. With a focus on our principal geographic markets, our search technology allows us to provide local search results in more than 1,400 cities. We also feature ‘‘parallel’’ search, which presents on a single page the results from both our main web index and our specialized information resources, including news, shopping, blogs, images and videos. Our search also includes feeds from leading blog hosting and social networking sites in Russia, including LiveJournal, Vkontakte and Facebook. We offer convenient access to our search engine through personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, and navigation and other digital devices. We also offer a wide range of specialized search, personalized and location-based services, including Yandex.News, Yandex.Market, Yandex.Mail and Yandex.Maps.
Our homepage, which attracted 24.5 million unique visitors in September 2011, according to TNS, provides a gateway to the wealth of information available online. Users can find answers to their explicit questions through our search box, as well as their implicit questions through current news, weather and road traffic reports, TV and movie schedules, personal email and other services. Our homepage can easily be customized by users to address their individual interests.
We derive substantially all of our revenues from online advertising. We enable advertisers to deliver targeted, cost-effective ads that are relevant to our users’ needs, interests and locations. Most of our revenues are derived from text-based advertising, which uses keywords selected by our advertisers to deliver ads based on a particular user query, the content of a website or webpage being viewed, or user behavior or characteristics. We derive a smaller portion of our revenues from display advertising, which principally consists of graphical ads that appear on specific webpages. Our ads are clearly marked and separate from our organic search results and from the content of the webpages on which they may also appear. We do not serve intrusive ads, such as ‘‘pop-ups,’’ that might detract from our users’ experience.
In addition to serving ads on our own search results and other webpages, we deliver ads to the thousands of third-party websites that make up our Yandex ad network. Through our ad network, we generate revenue for both our network partners and us and extend the audience reach of our advertisers. Our Yandex.Direct service, the largest automated, auction-based system for the placement of text-based advertising in Russia, makes it easy for advertisers to bid for desired keywords and to obtain the best price for their ads. We served ads for more than 158,000 advertisers in the third quarter of 2011 compared with 107,000 in the third quarter of 2010; 180,000 advertisers in the full year 2010 and 131,000 in the full year 2009, including many small and medium-sized businesses throughout Russia and the other countries in which we operate.
