Telegram channels have started receiving significant traffic from search engines, primarily from Yandex, where they already account for over 20% of all referrals. Users most often find these channels through transactional queries - when they are looking for goods or services without specifying a brand.
For businesses, this opens up the opportunity to attract an audience to Telegram for free through search engines, without launching paid advertising campaigns. Experts emphasize that such traffic is still unstable and depends on search engine algorithms. The main increase in referrals is observed in large and news channels, while author and niche projects receive practically no organic traffic from search.
According to a Seowork study, in 2024, the number of impressions of links to Telegram in search increased from 1.7 million to 3.7 million. At the same time, 90% of all traffic comes from Yandex, where Telegram channels often appear in the top 10 search results. In Google, they are displayed much lower.
Most of all, the search results feature channels related to transactional queries (7.6 million), followed by navigational queries (2.2 million).
According to Yandex, more than 3 million referrals are made daily from search to Telegram, with 70% of them leading to specific content rather than channel pages. Paid integration through the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) is also available for promoting Telegram.
Experts believe that this effect is still unstable. Most channels do not receive a tangible return without additional promotion. Organic traffic is still concentrated among media and large projects, rather than bloggers and authors with a narrow audience.
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