3 things you need to know about Yandex search

3 things you need to know about Yandex search

This article also appeared on SearchCowboys.

Yandex, the most popular search engine in Russia, is similar to Google in a lot of ways as many of its services are in essence the same as Google's.

But there are a number of things you need to know about Yandex before you become visible in its search results. Here's a few:

1.   Yandex prefers Russian sites
If you simply try looking for any English word or phrase on yandex.ru, you will see a lot of results from Russia, even though you didn't ask for them. On the contrary, google.ru, to which you are automatically redirected from Google.com if you have a Russian IP address, doesn't show you results in Russian if you look for something in English.

2.   Yandex takes geographical region into account
Unlike Google, Yandex search results greatly depend on the region or city the query comes from. On the one hand, this makes it easier for small locally-operating businesses to show up high on the search results in their region. On the other hand, it may be difficult for them to become known if they want to expand.

3.   Yandex values links more than content
For Google, a good website needs to have unique and useful content. For Yandex, a good website needs to have a lot of trustworthy links, and unique content is only one of the many factors Yandex uses in its rating.

Consequently, the search results on Yandex and Google vary dramatically. Here's an example (only two websites showed up on the first page of both Google and Yandex search results):

Searching for 'buy kindle' on Google

Searching for 'buy kindle' on Yandex

So if you want to optimize your site for Yandex - you have a lot of work ahead of you (check this Russian-language source for more info). To make it even more tricky, both Google and Yandex keep working on their algorithms, and companies need to be aware of any changes because they might affect their position in the search results. I'll keep you posted on the topic in my future atricles.

• Door Tamara Yadvichuk
• Gepost op 5 Mar, 2012