Another key talking point during the virtual roundtable was that of the dominance of aggregator websites within Yandex search results.
Much like Amazon can dominate certain search results in the UK, Russia has it’s own aggregators like Ozon and Wildberries.
Roundtable members posed the question to the Yandex representatives if this is seen as an issue, and what their take on this was.
In response, Slevinsky gave an initial answer of:
Any offline store where I buy goods is essentially a marketplace. And as a user, it is more convenient for me to buy meat, fish and fruits in one store than to travel to different points. Online is like offline. In my opinion, the situation here is harmonious, and small businesses can definitely get their audience.
Slevinsky and Pershina continued that the problem is that smaller businesses are potentially not doing enough to establish a USP or differentiation factor between themselves and other businesses (both small and large), and that if there is no differentiation for the user then the search engine will also not see enough difference to discern a prominent ranking position.
They did however show that if enough users show examples of were this is negative for users, and they are open to seeing it as a problem for users if one exists.
