Category Archives: Russia

Understanding the global search market

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The fine folks at Multlingual Search have published a report on the state of the search engine markets in more than a dozen countries.

This report is a quick read and, best of all, it’s free. You can download it here.

The most interesting takeaway is something I’ve been writing about on this blog — that while Google is by far the leading search engine globally, it still does not lead in a number of key markets, namely China, Russia, Estonia, Czech Republic, and South Korea.

According to this report, Google did not even make the list of top three search engines in South Korea; I’m wondering if Google’s recent redesign of its Korea site is beginning to help it make up ground.

Somewhat related is a new press release from comScore that “found that more than 750 million people age 15 and older – or 95 percent of the worldwide Internet audience – conducted 61 billion searches worldwide in August, an average of more than 80 searches per searcher.”

Here is the breakdown of these searches by region:

comscore

Say Goodbye to .YU

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Although the country code .SU (Soviet Union) refuses to die, .YU (Yugoslavia) is now history.

As the ICANN blog notes:

With the transition of Serbia and Montenegro to using .RS and .ME comes the task of migrating users from the .YU domain. As we have talked about before, ICANN uses an international standard for determining country codes for use on the Internet. This standard, known as ISO 3166-1, indicates when new countries codes are created, changed or removed. As Yugoslavia, the predecessor country to Serbia and Montenegro, is now a piece of history – so too is its YU country code.

Awhile back I wrote about the addition of .ME and the potential challenges it poses.

Also (possibly) on the horizon is a domain name for Kosovo. Much resistance must be overcome (namely Russia) before this domain becomes a reality, but I imagine it will within the next two years.

Finally, .KP for North Korea was also recently approved by ICANN as an official country country code.

To keep track of all 245 country code top-level-domains (ccTLDs), check out our new Country Codes of the World map. It even includes .KP.

.SU: The domain that refuses to die

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The .su country code domain stands for Soviet Union. It was established in 1990, just before the Soviet Union ceased to exist. And although the Soviet Union is but a memory, .su is alive and well, despite the best efforts of ICANN.

According to this Reuters article, roughly 10,000 .su domains have been registered, including 1,500 this year. While this number pales in comparison to the Russian domain, .ru, it has to drive the folks at ICANN a bit crazy. ICANN has been trying to fade .su away to nothingness for some time now but the registrars keep signing up new registrations.

Says the article:

“We want to try and save it,” Alexei Platonov, director of the independent Russian Institute of Public Networks, which promotes technology use, said at a news briefing.

“First there is the community and secondly there is also the history of the domain name … It’s original and offers Web site names that other domains don’t have any more,” Platonov said.

Despite the love a number of Russians feel for their .su domain, I don’t believe companies who plan to enter Russia need register it. The .ru domain will suffice, and it is one of the fastest-growing country codes on the Internet right now (next to China). In fact, it just recently surpassed one million registrations.

I will be soon publishing a new poster that includes all 245 country code domains — though it will not include the .su domain. You can read more about it here.

You can also read about the smaller version of this map, which we published earlier this year.

The Hottest Translated Languages, According to SDL

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SDL today released its “World Language League Table” which lists the languages that SDL has been most frequently translating.

The company says it translates more than a billion words each year into more than 150 languages.

Here are then 10 most-popular languages this year:

1. Canadian French
2. Spanish
3. French
4. German
5. Italian
6. Chinese
7. Japanese
8. Dutch
9. English
10. Russian

“We have observed a strong increase in European language translations – particularly from the Eastern regions as the EU expands,” notes Chris Boorman, chief marketing officer at SDL. “While Canadian French, Spanish, European French and German have held on to the top four spots since 2006, movements further down the list are strong indicators of international business change.”

I’m happy to see SDL sharing this information. It certainly reinforces what I’m seeing on my end. As I wrote two years back, large companies have moved beyond simply translating FIGS languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish) and are now focusing on emerging markets, such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). While FIGS still dominate SDL’s list, the BRIC languages are coming on strong.

SDL also released the following chart detailing the fastest-growing languages overall.

SDL languages

Eastern Europe is certainly getting a lot of attention these days, and not just because the EU requires it across many industries. Deloitte, for example, has over the past 12 months launched Web sites for Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria.

So what languages should we expect to see on the top 10 list next year? According to Chris Boorman:

“Contenders for the future could also include Greece, Nordics and the Baltic states, as there is already a growing demand for translation into these languages,” he concluded. “So we could be in for more surprises in next year’s list.”