Seznam.cz

By Bill Hartzer · Updated 19 August 2026

What Seznam is, and where its results come from

Seznam — the word means "list" in Czech — is the Czech Republic's home-grown internet portal, and one of a small number of national search engines anywhere that beat Google at home for years before losing. It is a portal first and a search engine second: seznam.cz is a homepage of news, email, weather and TV listings linking to around thirty services, with a search box on top.

Seznam crawls the open web itself and ranks its own fulltext index. No third party supplies its organic results; it is not a Bing or Google syndication customer. That makes it one of very few genuinely independent web indexes in the European Union, and arguably the only one run at national scale by an EU-headquartered company.

One qualification belongs with that claim, and it is usually missed: Seznam did not always have its own index. From 1996 it was a hand-curated directory, and for fulltext it licensed an engine from the Czech company Jyxo. Only in 2005 did it replace that with technology of its own, launching with 30 million documents. The independence is real, but it dates from 2005, not 1996.

The parts of Seznam most people use are not the search engine. Mapy.cz, rebranded Mapy.com for international users, is an outstanding mapping and outdoor-navigation product whose hiking and cycling coverage of Central Europe Google Maps does not match. Firmy.cz is the Czech business directory, Email.cz a widely used mail service, and Seznam Zprávy, from 2016, a real newsroom. Many Czechs search with Google and navigate with Seznam.

The crawler, and unusually good publisher documentation

The crawler is SeznamBot, currently identifying as SeznamBot/4.0 with a user-agent string pointing at Seznam's own crawler documentation. Seznam publishes two independent ways to verify it: reverse DNS, where genuine crawler addresses resolve to PTR records of the form fulltextrobot-77-75-77-xxx.seznam.cz, and an explicit list of IPv4 and IPv6 ranges served as JSON.

That is a more transparent verification posture than Google, Baidu or Naver offer. Seznam also documents crawling and indexing control separately and runs an Add Page form, a submission API and a robot-accessibility checker.

In August 2022 Seznam adopted IndexNow, the push-notification protocol that lets publishers tell an engine a URL has changed, joining Microsoft Bing and Yandex. That is a signal in itself: IndexNow participants are engines that run their own index and need change notifications for it.

On ranking, Seznam's one publicly named metric is S-Rank, a 0–10 site-authority score presented much as Google's old PageRank toolbar score was; beyond it, Seznam publishes no detailed account of how it ranks. Index size is similarly opaque: 30 million documents at the 2005 launch, rising from 400 million to 700 million by 2012, and nothing published since. That silence is informative — 700 million documents was already orders of magnitude short of Google's index in 2012.

Whatever quality edge Seznam retains is linguistic. Czech is a heavily inflected Slavic language with seven cases, and Seznam's morphological handling of it, plus its weighting of Czech-hosted content, is where the advantage lies — as Yandex's lies in Russian morphology.

Who owns Seznam, and how it makes money

Seznam.cz, a.s. is privately held. Ivo Lukačovič founded it in Prague in 1996 with CZK 50,000 and has been sole owner since 2016, when he bought back the 30% minority stake. That minority had travelled: Spray International took it in 2000, Lukačovič became the 70% controlling shareholder in 2003, and Lycos Europe sold the stake on to Tiger Holding Four and Miura International for CZK 1.7 billion in 2007.

The accurate description today is founder-owned, Czech-operated and offshore-held. The holding structure above the Czech operating company has been offshore for years, and trade press reported on 16 January 2026 that it was moving from Cyprus to Switzerland — a report that could not be read in full, so any detail beyond the direction of the move needs checking against the Czech commercial register.

Revenue is advertising plus commerce, all self-operated. Sklik is Seznam's own pay-per-click search and display platform, the Czech equivalent of Google Ads, placing ads across Seznam properties and a partner network. Firmy.cz sells paid business listings, Zboží.cz is a price-comparison service monetised on merchant clicks, and Seznam Zprávy and Televize Seznam are advertising-funded media — Televize Seznam still operating, with September 2026 programming announced in July 2026. Mapy.com Premium adds a paid subscription tier.

Seznam publishes no financial statements and no current headcount; its own history records 146 employees in 2003 and 642 in 2008, and nothing since. Less is verifiable about Seznam than about any listed competitor, and that opacity is a fair criticism.

Market share: twenty-five years in one direction

As of July 2026, StatCounter GlobalStats put Seznam at 14.05% of Czech search across all platforms, against Google at 81.07%, Bing 3.72%, DuckDuckGo 0.39% and Yandex 0.37%.

A single snapshot understates the story. The dated series below is drawn from Czech panels rather than StatCounter, so it is not methodologically continuous with that figure:

2000 — 53%, per Seznam's own corporate history.
2007–2008 — the most-used search engine on the Czech internet.
c. 2011 — Google overtakes Seznam in the Czech Republic, a milestone the European Commission referenced in its Google antitrust work.
May 2012 — Seznam 42.84%, Google 54.69%, per Toplist.
End of 2018 — Seznam 26%, Google 74%.
July 2026 — Seznam 14.05%, Google 81.07%, per StatCounter.

A majority of the market in 2000, rough parity in 2012, a quarter in 2018, one seventh in 2026. There is no inflection point anywhere in that series: Naver shows a national engine can fight back, and Seznam has not.

Czech domestic measurement has generally credited Seznam slightly higher than StatCounter does, for the same structural reason that applies to Naver: portal searches resolving inside Seznam's own services produce no outbound referral for StatCounter to count. The gap is nothing like Korea's, but it points the same way.

Seznam's share is materially higher on desktop than on mobile, because Google is the default on Android and in Chrome and Seznam has no equivalent distribution. That is what the European Commission's Android case was about — the July 2018 decision and its EUR 4.34 billion fine, and the choice-screen remedy that followed. Seznam was among the complainants pressing that case and has argued publicly that the remedy was inadequate. On the evidence of the share series, it has a point.

Privacy, jurisdiction and a competition investigation

Jurisdiction is the headline, and it is favourable. Seznam is a Czech company inside the European Union, bound by the GDPR, the ePrivacy rules as implemented in Czech law and the Digital Services Act, supervised by the Czech data-protection authority and ultimately the Court of Justice. There is no standing obligation to cooperate with state intelligence of the kind Chinese or Russian law imposes, and Czech courts are independent. For a European user that is a different proposition entirely from Baidu, Yandex or Sogou.

Seznam is not, however, a privacy-first search engine, and does not claim to be. It is an advertising business that tracks users to target ads through Sklik, sets cookies and runs a logged-in account ecosystem spanning email, maps and the portal. Its consent and data-rights controls exist because EU law requires them, not as a differentiator. Anyone choosing Seznam over DuckDuckGo or Startpage on privacy grounds has misunderstood what it is.

No independent security or privacy audit of Seznam search, comparable to Citizen Lab's work on Baidu and Sogou, appears to have been published — an absence of findings rather than a clean bill of health.

What Seznam has faced is competition scrutiny — as a defendant. On 16–17 October 2024 the Czech competition authority, ÚOHS, raided its offices over what its spokesman described as reasonable suspicion of anti-competitive behaviour, specifically abuse of a dominant position; sources differ by a day on the date. Seznam said it was cooperating and was not aware of proceedings against it. The outcome as of August 2026 is not established. The irony is worth recording plainly: a company that spent a decade complaining about Google's dominance is now under investigation for abusing its own.

AI features: a documented absence

As of 19 August 2026, Seznam does not document any AI answer, AI summary or generative search feature in its English search help, its fuller Czech search help, its corporate site, or its actively updated Czech blog. The Czech help topics cover crawling, indexing, SeznamBot, structured data, image and video search and personal-data handling, with no AI topic of any kind. The corporate site's most recently highlighted feature is Mapy.com Premium route drawing, and the blog — posting within 48 hours of the check — covered hiking trails and video ad formats.

Four sources, two languages, one updated the day before the check, and no AI search feature documented in any. That is an absence of documentation rather than proof that none exists in the product.

The absence is informative. Every other engine of comparable regional standing — Baidu, Yandex, Naver — has shipped a named, self-built generative model into search. Seznam is far too small to train a frontier model, and a market of roughly ten million Czech speakers cannot commercially justify one. In a search market being reshaped by generative answers, that is a strategic problem with no obvious solution.

Who it suits, who it does not, and what people get wrong

Seznam is good at Czech-language and Czech-local search. Czech morphology, Czech-hosted content weighting and Czech business and place data are its real edge; for finding someone to service a boiler in Brno, the Firmy.cz integration often beats Google. Mapy.com is the standout product and it is not close. Seznam Zprávy is a serious newsroom rather than a content farm. Its publisher-facing transparency is better than that of much larger engines.

It is a poor choice for several readers. Anyone searching in a language other than Czech or Slovak: the index is not there. Anyone doing technical, academic or English-language research, where scale decides the outcome and Seznam has none. Anyone who wants AI-assisted search. Anyone choosing it for privacy, since it is an ordinary ad-funded tracker that happens to be GDPR-bound.

It suits Czech and Slovak speakers looking for Czech content, businesses and places, and anyone in Central Europe who wants Mapy.com. There is also a plurality argument — that an independent European index existing at all is worth something — but that is a values argument rather than a quality one, and worth labelling as such.

Common misconceptions

"Seznam is the Czech Google and still beats it at home." It did, until roughly 2011. As of July 2026 StatCounter has Google at 81.07% of Czech search and Seznam at 14.05%. This is the most common and most out-of-date claim made about it.
"Seznam is dead." No — this is the Lycos error applied to the wrong company. Seznam runs around thirty active services, a newsroom, a maps product with a paid tier, and a live crawler. Its search share has collapsed; the company has not.

Frequently asked questions

Does Seznam have its own search index?

Yes. Seznam crawls the open web with its own crawler, SeznamBot, and ranks its own fulltext index. It does not serve Google's or Bing's organic results. It has run its own index since 2005, publishes crawler verification details including PTR patterns and a JSON list of its IP ranges, and joined the IndexNow protocol in August 2022 — all things only an engine with its own index needs.

Is Seznam bigger than Google in the Czech Republic?

Not any more. Seznam led Czech search until roughly 2011, but StatCounter GlobalStats put Google at 81.07% and Seznam at 14.05% in July 2026. The decline has been continuous: 53% in 2000 on Seznam's own figures, 42.84% against Google's 54.69% in May 2012 per Toplist, 26% at the end of 2018, and 14.05% now. There is no inflection point in that series.

Who owns Seznam.cz?

Founder Ivo Lukačovič, who started the company in Prague in 1996 with CZK 50,000 and has been sole owner since 2016, when he bought back a 30% minority stake previously held by Swedish and then Luxembourg investors. The holding structure above the Czech operating company is offshore; trade press reported on 16 January 2026 that it was moving from Cyprus to Switzerland. Founder-owned, Czech-operated, offshore-held is the accurate phrasing.

Does Seznam have AI search or AI answers?

None is documented. As of 19 August 2026, Seznam's English search help, its Czech search help, its corporate site and its actively updated Czech blog contain no AI answer, AI summary or generative search feature. That is an absence of documentation rather than proof none exists. Seznam is too small to train a frontier model, and a market of about ten million Czech speakers does not commercially justify one.

Is Seznam a privacy-friendly alternative to Google?

It is European and GDPR-bound, which is real and meaningful, but it is not a privacy product and does not market itself as one. Seznam tracks users to target advertising through its Sklik platform, sets cookies and runs a logged-in account ecosystem across email, maps and the portal. Its consent and data-rights controls exist because EU law requires them. It does not belong on a shelf with DuckDuckGo or Startpage.

Has Seznam always had its own search engine?

No, and this is a common error. From 1996 Seznam was a hand-curated directory of Czech websites. For fulltext search it licensed an engine from the Czech company Jyxo, and only in 2005 replaced it with technology of its own, launching with 30 million documents. Its status as an independent index is genuine but dates from 2005, not from the company's founding.

What is Mapy.cz, and is it part of Seznam?

Mapy.cz — rebranded Mapy.com for international users in 2024 — is Seznam's mapping and outdoor-navigation service, and for many people it is the best thing the company makes. Its hiking and cycling trail coverage, tourist route markings and contour detail for Czechia and Central Europe exceed Google Maps. Seznam added a paid Premium tier, its clearest step toward direct consumer subscription revenue.

Is Seznam still operating?

Yes. seznam.cz serves live results, and the company runs around thirty services including maps, email, a business directory, a price-comparison site, a newsroom and a television operation whose September 2026 programming was announced in July 2026. Seznam's search share has collapsed over twenty-five years, but the company has not — this is the opposite of the Lycos or Excite case.