Google or Yandex: Where to Promote a Site in Uzbekistan

Which search engine do people use in Uzbekistan?

Google, by a wide margin. According to DataReportal, about 78% of users in Uzbekistan search through Google, roughly 21% through Yandex, and less than two percent go to the other systems. The gap is widening, too: over the year Google gained share and Yandex lost it.

The mechanics are straightforward and have nothing to do with search quality. The overwhelming majority of phones in the country run Android, where Chrome comes preinstalled, and in Chrome the default search is Google. People do not choose a search engine, they simply open the browser.

From this a hasty conclusion follows: since Google is almost everywhere, Yandex can be ignored. That is a mistake, and here is why.

So can Yandex be ignored?

Every fifth user is not a rounding error, it is a fifth of your market.

The Yandex audience is specific and often has money to spend. It is mostly the Russian-speaking segment, mostly urban. If you sell services in Tashkent, the Yandex share among your actual clients can be noticeably higher than the country average.

Advertising on Yandex is cheaper. Competition per click here is lower than on Google, so the cost per lead often works out better. The limitation is honest: the volume is smaller too. In my experience the Yandex ad market in Uzbekistan is structurally thin - it brings inexpensive leads, but it does not bring scale.

The cost of being present is close to zero. This is not about a second site: the same site is indexed by both systems, you simply add it to a second webmaster panel and a second counter. That is half an hour of work.

The right conclusion: Google is the main channel, Yandex is the additional one, and it would be foolish to give it up, because it costs nothing.

How does promotion for Google differ from promotion for Yandex?

Less than people assume. The foundation is shared: a clear structure, a fast site, a working mobile version, texts that answer the question a person actually has. Eighty percent of the work counts in both systems at once.

The differences are in emphasis. Google leans more on content and authority: what matters is whether the page answers the query better than others and whether real experience stands behind it. Yandex pays more attention to user behaviour: how long a person spent on the page, whether they went back to the results to keep looking, and it reacts more visibly to commercial factors - prices, contacts, a visible range of products.

One more practical difference: Yandex accepts new sites more slowly and keeps an eye on them for longer, while Google usually indexes faster.

But in real work these are not two different projects. A site built well grows in both systems - just at different speeds.

Do you need to do anything separately for each search engine?

A separate site or separate texts - no. Separate technical steps - yes, and there are only a few.

Register the site in both panels: Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster. Both are free and both show what the search engine sees on your site and what errors there are.

Install both counters: GA4 and Yandex Metrica. Metrica records sessions - you literally see how a person behaves on the page, and that is useful no matter where they came from.

Submit the sitemap to both systems. One file, two submissions.

Create listings in the directories: Google Business Profile and Yandex Business. For local services this often brings more enquiries than site rankings, and it costs nothing.

All together - a few hours, once. After that you work on one site, not two.

Where should you run ads?

Here the difference between the systems is far more substantial than in SEO.

Google Ads gives you volume: a wider audience, more reach, room to scale. The price for that is higher competition and a higher cost per click.

Yandex Direct is cheaper but smaller. It works well as an additional source and for a Russian-speaking audience, but it does not replace the main channel.

The practical order for most businesses in Uzbekistan: start with Google, and add Direct as a second channel once the main one is set up and you know how much you are willing to pay per lead.

Both make sense only on one condition - the ad has to lead to a proper landing page, not to a social media profile or a generic homepage. Otherwise both channels will drain the budget equally well.

What should a business do in practice?

The order, if you already have a site.

Build one technically good site - fast, with a clear structure, working on a phone. That is the base for both systems.

Connect both webmaster panels and both counters. Make sure a form submission is recorded as a goal in both - without that you will not know which channel brings clients.

Plan your main traffic from Google, and keep Yandex as an addition with inexpensive leads.

Do not spend effort on "optimising for Yandex" in isolation from Google. Everything that really works, works in both systems.

How do I handle this?

On every site I build, both counters are installed by default - GA4 and Yandex Metrica - along with both webmaster panels. This is not a separate service and not an extra charge: basic technical SEO is included in the price of the site.

The reason is simple: losing a fifth of the audience because someone decided it was insignificant is a bad trade, especially when the setup is done once and costs almost nothing.

If you want to understand whether both systems see you and where you stand technically - write to me, I will look at the site and tell you specifically what is set up and what is not.