Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has acquired WebVisor, a Russian startup, after holding an “open day for startups” to pitch the search company. WebVisor provides visitor behavior analysis (mouse movement, clicks, text copying etc.) and will be integrated with the company’s own visitor statistics tool, Yandex.Metrica. Terms were not disclosed.
Yandex says the WebVisor team has joined the company to work on merging their technology into its own framework. WebVisor will keep servicing existing clients, but the service will not accept new customers going forward.
Under its Yandex.Start programme, launched last summer, the company says it is a looking at teams developing multimedia, data processing and data structuring, geo information systems and advertising technologies. It’s a different approach to acquisition in Western startups but clearly works for Yandex.
Yandex has thus been partnering with a number of startup communities in Russia, including the GreenfieldProject, the Glavstart, the Higher School of Economics’ Business Incubator, the Academy of National Economy’s Business Incubator and the Techno Cup at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Yandex gives the most promising developer teams an opportunity to join the Yandex.Start program.
WebVisor participated in the September open-day session.
You can watch an interview with the Yandex CEO at the recent TechCrunch Moscow event here at the 10.30 minutes mark.