Yandex: Webmaster Tools

Yandex: Webmaster Tools
Overview and Guidelines
Agenda
•  Introduction
•  Register
•  Features and Tools
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Introduction
What is Yandex
•  Yandex is the leading search engine in Russia.
•  It has nearly 60% market share in Russia with a stronghold in
Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Turkey.
•  Yandex is better for Russian language search. Yandex was created
specifically for the Russian market and is better able to parse user
intent over spelling in the Russian language.
•  Yandex also offers searches in English which means you have a
potential to extract traffic from Russia.
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Yandex Algorithm
•  MatrixNet is Russia’s page priority algorithm (similar to PageRank).
•  It measures site popularity and the sum and relevancy of backlinks to
determine a thematic index citation (TIC) score which plays into
MatrixNet.
•  TIC is scored on a scale of 0-10,000 and is same for every page on
the website so it is not page-by-page like PageRank.
•  A plugin called Yandex Elements will allow you to see this score:
-  https://elements.yandex.com.tr/
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Register
Yandex Features without Registration
•  You can submit your site to Yandex
without having a Webmasters Tools
account.
•  Features that you can access without
registration include:
-  Site Submission
-  Check your site is indexed by Yandex
-  Analyze your site’s Robots.txt
-  Report spam search result and remove your URL
from search
-  Validate your Sitemap, XML feed and Microformats
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•  However, registering your site and having
Webmaster Tools can help derive deeper
insights.
Yandex Webmaster Tools Account Registration
•  Get your Yandex.Passport Account.
Register with the following information:
-  First and Last Name (Surname)
-  Username
-  Account Password
-  Mobile Phone (reset passwords)
-  Alternate Email Address (reset passwords)
-  Security Question (reset passwords)
•  If you have registered with a mobile
number, Yandex will send you a SMS with
a confirmation code which is required for
completing the registration process.
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Add your Website
•  Once you are logged in, click “Add Site”
link.
•  Enter your site URL in the and click “Add
Site”.
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Yandex Webmaster Tools Account Registration
•  You have 4 options for site verification:
-  HTML File Upload – Download an HTMl file and
then upload in your site’s root directory
-  Meta Tag – This is a simple and recommended
method. Copy the HTML code and paste in your
site’s header section. Note, this has to be on all
pages of your site
-  Txt File - Create an empty text file with the specified
name provided by Yandex and upload it in your
site’s root directory
-  By DNS - Create a CNAME record as provided by
Yandex in your site’s DNS setting
•  Once you have verified using one of these
options, publish and click “Check” to see if
Yandex can reach your site.
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Features and Tools
Sitemap Submission
•  Adding a Sitemap:
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Navigate to “Sitemap files” tab under “Indexing options”
section
to “Sitemap files” tab under “Indexing options” section
and click “Add”. (XML and Text formats only)
The status will show OK. You can validate your Sitemap
before submission, for any errors, using their Sitemap
Validator
•  https://webmaster.yandex.com/sitemaptest.xml
“More Info” will show the details of the current version
available in the searches and the last updated Sitemap
version
It may take two weeks for Yandex Robot to process the
new version
Yandex does not provide an option to resubmit your
Sitemap. The only way is first delete the existing one
and then submit a new one
Server Response Check Tool
•  This is similar to “fetch as Google” to help
webmasters troubleshoot the pages with
errors which are not indexed in the
searches by YandexBot
•  You can access this tool in multiple
places:
- 
Once you logged in to your account, you can see the
link in the right side under “My Sites” section
-  “HTTP Codes” option available under “Indexing”
-  “Excluded Page” option available under “Indexing”
•  How to use this tool:
- 
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Enter the right format of the URL, select Yandex Robot
type and click “Check”
-  Response Code will help you analyze errors
-  Page Content lets you see content as seen by
YandexBot
Excluded Pages Option
•  Go to “Excluded Pages” option available
under “Indexing” section. Yandex will
show the pages from your site that were
not indexed by YandexBot under various
categories:
- 
- 
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HTTP Error Pages (404)
URLs blocked by Robots.txt
Page formats not supported, for example, Sitemap
•  You can set a level of importance for
these error codes by clicking on ‘Settings”.
•  Click on “Links to Pages” in the HTML
Status Report to see the external and
internal pages linking to the error page.
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Report Spam
•  Yandex’s algorithm solely looks at user
experience and keyword ranking metrics
and not links and hence they are able to
filter out spam links.
•  You can also report on external links to
your site if they contain a virus, phishing or
search engine spam.
- 
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https://webmaster.yandex.com/delspam.xml
Remove URL
•  You can request URL removals when a
page no longer exists on your site. This
will speed up the process of removal from
Yandex’s index.
•  It is essential that the page returns a 404
for Yandex to process your request.
- 
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https://webmaster.yandex.com/delurl.xml
Robots.txt
•  You can download the robots.txt file from
your site on to this tool and check to see if
Yandex robot follows the file rules.
•  You can also create a Robots.txt file which
you will need to manually upload on to
your website to effect a change.
- 
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https://webmaster.yandex.com/robots.xml
Structured Data
•  Yandex has a Microformat Validator to
check the semantic markup of your site:
- 
Microdata
- 
Schema.org
- 
Microformats
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OpenGraph
- 
RDF
•  You can access it here:
- 
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https://webmaster.yandex.com/microtest.xml
Site Region
•  Yandex wants you to specify a site region
for your website. This is because Yandex
employs different ranking algorithms in
different regions, and the regional
affiliation of a site is one of the factors
that's taken into account during the
ranking process.
•  If you don’t have a clear regional affiliation,
it may reduce the ability of the site to rank
in certain areas.
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Search Queries
•  Yandex provides “Popular Queries” data
with:
-  Impressions
-  Clicks
•  The reporting period is a week, and you
can report on any week within the last 7
weeks.
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Detecting Malware
•  Yandex automatically notifies each time
they detect a virus on your site. Each
message includes a link for more detailed
information:
-  Examples of affected pages
-  Date they were checked and antivirus
results
-  Chain of infection and sequence of hosts
•  There is a “Recheck” button to inform
Yandex once your site is clear.
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Thank You