OREANDA-NEWS. September 29, 2011. Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX) today announced a USD 15 million investment in the U.S. company blekko, creator of the search engine blekko.com.

Yandex’s investment was a part of a USD 30 million funding round, with Yandex as the lead investor. Also participating in the round were an Australian investor, MLC Private Equity, and existing investors U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Capital and PivotNorth Capital. Along with the investment Yandex acquired a minority interest in the company. Yandex’s Chief Executive Officer will join blekko’s board of directors.

Blekko was founded in 2007, and in 2010 launched a new search engine that seeks to provide its users with only high-quality search results through the integration of search algorithms and user curation from web users. This method helps blekko provide safe and useful results.

“We love blekko and think it’s a great product – a quality search engine that organically combines search algorithms with expert opinions. We believe the outlook for this approach is strong and that the blekko team is poised to make it a success,” says Arkady Volozh.