Vish Makhijani, the SVP and GM of Search at Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is joining Yandex, the number-one Russian search site, as the CEO of Yandex Labs, a new Silicon Valley research facility, our sources say. This new facility in Silicon Valley will be a small one to begin with, with the idea to hire more people as the company grows. Interestingly, the company is expected to do a big US IPO soon, so this might be the start of building out a business presence here in America.

The current CEO of Yandex, the main company, is Arkady Volozh, and will continue to be so. As we reported Monday, Yandex has bought road traffic information service SMIlink.

• Russia’s Yandex Buys Traffic Info Service SMIlink