Russia’s Yandex, which competes with Google in areas such as search, maps, translation services and more, and is the dominant search engine in its home market (reporting a 61.7% share, back in July), is setting its sights on Google Analytics — announcing the launch today of a free analytics tool for mobile developers using the Android, iOS or Windows Phone platforms.
The tool, called Metrica for Apps, builds on Yandex’s existing Metrica web analytics tool but focuses fully on mobile and tablet apps.
The app tracker tool includes the ability to track real-time app usage data; get customised crash reports; and build other detailed, custom reports — based on factors including the users' country, app version, OS and version, device type (tablet or smartphone), model and manufacturer, screen resolution, user interface language, mobile provider, connection type, user actions and time of user sessions.
In a blog announcing the launch of Metrica for Apps, Yandex said the next version will also add marketing tools, and new options that will enable developers to “see their traffic sources and funnels and use advanced event settings”. All Metrica for Apps’ current features are entirely free to use — but it may look to add premium features to monetise the offering in time.
“We are thinking about that,” a Yandex spokesman told TechCrunch. “Working on more reports, including marketing staff, advanced in-app events report, and also some unique reports like ‘heat map’ of user conversions by tap or by swipe (like click map we show in old good Yandex.Metrica for Websites).”
In addition to the likes of Google Analytics, Yandex’s tool competes with other well established app tracker businesses such as Flurry and App Annie. But with so many apps being born, and growth in the connected devices market continuing to skew towards app-focused devices such as tablets and smartphones, the rising tide of apps should be able to support multiple analytics offerings.
Yandex’s search share in Russia has only been increasing slightly in recent times so it’s been getting more enterprising about how it extends its business, and moves into other products. App analytics is the just its latest foray. Last week Yandex acquired KinoPoisk, a Russian IMDb, to move into movie search and recommendations, for instance.
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