Yandex Reveals the New Face to Users

Internet, August 1, 2007. Yandex starts open testing of the new, tenth version of their homepage today. Anyone interested can find out what Yandex will look like in the near future at next.yandex.ru.

New information blocks, indicators, and other changes in design and functionality of the Yandex homepage are detailed by Dmitry Ivanov, Yandex Chief Product Officer, in the corporate blog (the post is available only in Russian). The changes are supposed to give users a better access to the new and the popular services on the portal without increasing the size of the webpage.

One of the main innovations is an easier email access. Another click is no longer required (the good old link in the upper right-hand corner is still there). Authorised users can see the number of unread messages right on the homepage.

Yandex users now have another reason to upload their pictures on the Yandex.Fotki free photo-hosting service: now the picture of the day, which the users vote for, is featured not only on the main page of the service, but also on the portal's homepage.

Yandex research of many months in automated blogosphere processing resulted in another product (besides the rating of popular posts and other measurements): topics popular among bloggers. The results are comparable with the main topics on Yandex.News, the more so, that the information blocks of both services are now featured on the homepage. Sometimes it is rather exciting to trace the discrepancies in what interests mass media and what interests bloggers.

The News block now has a yellow ”the-news-of-the-hour” arrow that indicates the ”hottest” news item, which is chosen automatically.

The regional information block in the right-hand side of the screen now takes more space and features city maps and directories. The website catalogue area, on the contrary, shrank so that the main content of the webpage could still be on the first screen.

The new informers, Yandex.Postcards and Yandex.Games, now each will be sending reminders of holidays and new games respectively.

It is also possible now to find former schoolmates on MoiKrug social network right from the homepage.

Finally, Yandex homepage now became double-sided: you can turn it back and forth ;) To perform that, you should click ”Turn” in the upper left-hand corner. The ”other” side of the homepage — ya.ru — will also have such link.

Both during and after testing, Yandex welcomes comments and remarks about the new version of their homepage. Users are encouraged to send their opinion via feedback form at http://feedback.yandex.ru/.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com