December 22, 2009
Internet, December 22, 2009. Yandex search shows locally relevant results for web users living in the cities which have enough websites with local content. So, users in one of 1,250 cities making a local search query like “driving school” [автошкола] or “dentist” [стоматология] will see results most relevant for this particular city.
Information about a user’s location is required for a search engine to answer about 30% of all user queries. For each local search, Yandex returns results with local links ranking higher. So, users searching for a “beauty parlour” [салон красоты] in Kaluga can easily find a beautician exactly in this city. Just like those living in Oryol will find “real estate agents” [агентство недвижимости] in their city. Users looking for local information for other cities should only add the name of a city to their search query. So, if a user searched for “Yaroslavl hotels” [гостиницы Ярославля], Yandex will look for hotels on Yaroslavl’s websites regardless of the user’s location.
The new version of Yandex’s search engine, also known as Snezhinsk, allowed to implement local search in more than a thousand cities in Russia. This version uses a considerably many more ranking parameters including dozens of those describing website’s location.
In addition to localized search results, Yandex users in a number of cities can see locally relevant search suggestions and information from the company’s other services.
The first version of Yandex’s local search for 19 large cities was launched in early October. To read more about the local search function, please visit http://company.yandex.ru/technology/regions/ (in Russian).
