VK extended the lease of the yandex.ru domain for Dzen for two more years

Holding VK, which owns the Zen aggregator, and Yandex have agreed to extend the redirect from the domain yandex.ru to the Zen platform. The agreement is for two years and will preserve the previous traffic redirection scheme, RBC’s sources said.

Conditions of the deal

Yandex’s press service confirmed the extension of the agreement, specifying that the domain yandex.ru still belongs to the company. VK also reported on the deal, but without disclosing details.

According to media market interlocutors, the agreement envisages the extension of advertising cooperation:

• “Zen” will continue to use Yandex’s advertising network;
• Yandex’s search bar will remain embedded in Zen;
• the interaction model is based on the principle of revenue sharing

Experts note that this solution allows Yandex to expand its advertising inventory without additional investments, and VK to increase revenues without increasing operating expenses.

How VK and Yandex’s assets changed

In September 2022, VK acquired the “Zen” and “News” services from Yandex, while the search engine gained control of the Delivery Club service. After the deal:

• domain dzen.ru became the main page of “Zen”;
• domain ya.ru became the new start page of “Yandex”;
• when going to yandex.ru, users were redirected to “Zen”;

The transition period was for three years and ended in the fall of 2025. The new agreement effectively enshrines the continuation of this scheme.

Why VK needs yandex.ru

Before the deal in 2022, the audience of yandex.ru reached 77.2 million users per month (according to Mediascope). For comparison, Zen has 46.1 million, News has 25.1 million. A significant part of the traffic came through the Yandex search box.

According to experts, keeping the redirect is a “win-win” for both companies:

• VK gets a steady source of traffic;
• Yandex – additional income and expansion of advertising opportunities;
• media – access to the audience through Zen’s recommendation algorithms;

Since the end of 2024, a new model of traffic distribution has been working on Zen: when a user clicks on a story, he or she is directed to a media channel within the platform. Publications have noted a multiple increase in traffic after the introduction of this format.

Market value

According to experts, the contract extension will support regional media that depend on Zen’s traffic and get new readers through it. It also reduces competition between VK and Yandex, providing a more stable ecosystem in the media market.