Internet giant Yandex snaps up Russian IMDb

Internet giant Yandex, often dubbed Russia’s Google, has acquired KinoPoisk, the largest Russian-language website dedicated to television and film with visitor figures of 18.6 million a month. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but Yandex has said it will use the acquisition to help improve its search capabilities.

Specifically the search engine will use the content on KinoPoisk to provide users with film recommendations tailored to personal preferences and interests. The team behind KinoPoisk, which was owned by founders Vitaliy Tatsiy and Dmitry Sukhanov as well as France’s Allocine, will join Yandex.

Similar to online database IMDb, KinoPoisk publishes expert and user-generated film reviews, movie and celebrity news, trailers, and information about film times and tickets. There are more than 100 million film ratings on the website with three million new ones added each month.

Dmitriy Stepanov, head of media services at Yandex, said: “More and more often, consumers are turning to the internet to get ideas on what movies and TV shows to watch. In order to provide high quality answers, we need to have deep knowledge of the subject matter.”