The largest sites in Russia

Main article: Runet

2024

The most visited Internet services in Russia - Mediascope

The company Mediascope in January 2025 presented the results of a study of Internet traffic in, Russia according to which "" and Yandex Google retained a leading position in audience coverage in 2024.

According to Kommersant, Yandex's monthly reach reached 100.3 million users, which is 82.4% of the Russian Internet audience. The average daily coverage of the search engine increased from 56.7% to 57% by December 2024.

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Фото: Freepik

Google showed a slight decrease in monthly coverage from 81.7% to 81.5%, with daily averages rising from 52.3% to 53%. The messenger entered the top three, WhatsApp displacing YouTube from the third position of the rating.

WhatsApp's monthly audience increased to 96 million users by December 2024, with an average daily audience of 82.6 million. Social network Vkontakte"" took fourth place in the ranking, overtaking YouTube for the first time in terms of monthly user coverage.

According to experts interviewed by the publication, Google will maintain its leading position in the Russian market due to the popularity of Google Maps and Google Translator services. At the same time, WhatsApp can cede part of the audience to the Telegram messenger.

The Zen platform showed a decrease in indicators - monthly coverage decreased by 5.8% to 77.3 million users, and average daily coverage decreased by 13.5% to 27.8 million people. Director of the Institute of Modern Media Kirill Tanaev connects this with the fact that the platform failed to attract the audience of Yandex News, which moved to Telegram.

From January 1, 2024, Mediascope uses a new algorithm for processing data on visiting desktop and mobile versions of web pages as part of the Cross Web study. The study counted only users who visited resources at least once during the reporting period.^[1]

The most visited sites and instant messengers in Russia

As of October 2024, the most visited Internet resource in Russia is Yandex, which is used by 83% of the country's citizens aged 12 and over. Such data are given in the Mediascope study, published on November 14, 2024.

It is noted that the monthly audience of the Internet in the Russian Federation reached 103 million people, which is approximately 85% of residents 12 years and older. In the total mass of web users, the largest share is made up of people aged 35 to 44 years - about 22%. The share of users in the group of 25-34 years is estimated at 18%, 45-54 years - 17%. The most visited network resources in the country are:

• Yandex - 83%;
• Google — 82%;
• WhatsApp - 79% (owned by Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization; activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited);
• YouTube — 75%;
• VKontakte - 74%;
• Telegram — 72%;
• Sberbank - 69%;
• Mail.ru — 64%;
• Zen - 63%;
• Wildberries — 62%;
• Ozon — 61%;
• Public services - 57%.

The study says that Russians spend an average of six days a month on the Internet. For young people aged 12-24, this figure is even higher - more than eight days. Approximately 21% of the total time that users spend online is spent on social networks. Another 19% take away video resources, approximately 18% - instant messengers. About 8% goes to games, 5% to e-commerce platforms. If we consider individual social media services, then users devote 31% of the time per month to YouTube, 19% each to Telegram and VKontakte. Among messengers, the coverage is as follows:

• WhatsApp - 79% per month;
• Telegram — 72%;
• Viber — 26% ;
• Discord — 9%.

The average time of mobile internet consumption per day per person is 3 hours 52 minutes. The younger the Russians, the more time they spend online: for the group of 12-24, this figure reaches almost 6 hours a day.^[2]

2020: Russian sites in the top 50 of the world

The largest Internet sites in the world for November 2020

2019: Russian sites in the top 100 of the world

Top 100 sites in the world (billion visits in June 2019)

Yandex was in 11th place in the hundred most visited sites. The number of visits to yandex in June 2019 amounted to 3.06 billion. The list also includes Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki and VK.

2018

2016:5 Internet projects beat Channel One in terms of audience size

Several Internet projects of Runet bypassed the largest Russian television channels in reaching an audience of 12-44 years in large cities of Russia (with a population of more than 700,000 people; 700+). Vedomosti received these data from one of the Internet companies, a TNS representative confirmed them. This is TNS data for June 2016, which takes into account both the mobile audience of Runet (those who visit sites from mobile devices) and the traditional one (from PCs and laptops).

The largest coverage of the monthly audience (those who visit the site or include the TV channel at least once a month) Google is 88%. In second place "" Yandex- he has 87.2%; on the third - "" with In contact 86%, on the fourth - YouTube with 82.7%, on the fifth - Mail.ru with 81.8%.

Channel One - the leader in popularity among viewers - ranks only sixth with 81.5%. Russia 1, STS and TNT have even less (see graph).

Slightly different data for the daily audience. Here the leader is Vkontakte (coverage - 58.7%), Yandex is in second place with 50%, Google is in third with 45.7%, Mail.ru is in fourth with 36%, and YouTube is in fifth with 30.9%. Channel One has the sixth place with 23.8%. STS, "Russia 1" and TNT have even less.

There is, however, one subtlety in comparing the audience. Measuring the audience of Runet, TNS received the total population of 700 + cities (in the age range of 12-44 years) for 16.4 million people, and TV - for 17.3 million. When measuring the audience of the Internet, residents of the new Moscow (territories beyond the Moscow Ring Road, annexed to the city) were taken into account, and when measuring the TV audience - Moscow, new Moscow and 16 cities of the Moscow region with a population of more than 100,000 people within the First Concrete Ring, explains the representative of TNS. In addition, Togliatti was not taken into account when assessing the TV audience.

When exactly large Internet companies surpassed TV channels in terms of audience is not known for sure: TNS began to indicate the Internet audience, taking into account mobile users, only in May 2016. Back in the spring of 2012, Yandex overtook First in terms of audience at the age of 12-54, but since then TNS has changed the panel.

2012: Vkontakte takes the lead

2011: TV is still stronger than the Internet

TNS also compared television and internet audiences. It turned out that people from 12 to 34 years old devote more time to the Internet than television, over 34 years old - on the contrary. However, television is still strong: it takes 218 minutes a day from young people 12-24 years old and over 314 minutes from people over 34 years old.

The spread in the status-sexual audience of resources is curious. It turned out that the largest percentage of men (67%) with a relatively high social level prefer torrent trackers such as the famous rutracker.org (former torrents.ru). Previously, TNS did not try to publicly measure the status of resources in this context. When asked about the sources of the data, Reibman said that the company used a set of methods.^[3]

Surprisingly, according to the FOM (October 2011), most often runettes are interested in health and sports (46%), secondly - economics and finance, as well as education and science (36% each). This is followed by humor, entertainment, personal relations, tourism, politics, and only 7% is secular chronicle, while 6% is art.

In February 2011 Russia , the portal was the leader in audience coverage (Mail.Ru 37.9 million people, coverage - 82.3% of the web audience), followed by "" Yandex(37.7 million, 81.7%), "" Vkontakte(33 million, 71.5%), (Google 29.7 million, 64.5%) and (RBC 18.9 million, 41%).

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