Yandex again pleases users with innovations to improve the quality of information search. Nowadays, changes have been made to snippets - a "Read more" button and a chat with the company have appeared. Let's take a closer look at these updates.

In the desktop version of Yandex search, a new button "Read more" has appeared, with its help the user can see the extended snippet of the site. When you click on the button, the explanatory text associated with the request appears.

Previously, this function was available only for mobile devices, but now it has been introduced into the functionality of the desktop version of search results on an ongoing basis.

In the recent past, a limited amount of information was displayed in a Yandex snippet - 240 characters with spaces, about 3 lines. Often the user did not have enough of this information, and there was a need to go to the site in search of information of interest.

Now, with the addition of this button, the process of finding information for the user can accelerate several times.

View of the new Yandex snippet

How the Yandex snippet looked like before:

Now the Yandex snippet in a minimized state looks like this

The snippet looks like this in the mobile version

The corresponding view in the mobile search results.

Pros and cons of Yandex extended snippet

Based on this information, the user can make a more informed choice about the usefulness of the resource. And for a site owner, an extended snippet is an opportunity to get more targeted traffic, improve behavioral factors - for example, reduce bounce rates and increase conversion traffic.

However, the introduction of this function may also negatively affect the search traffic of the site, since this description will be quite enough for the user to obtain the required information without going to the site.

As for the length of the extended snippet, Yandex experts say this:

"The principle is this: an extended snippet can be no more than 3 times longer than the current one."... That is, the maximum length of a snippet at the moment can be up to 9 lines or 650-700 characters.

“Regarding where the extended descriptions come from, the same rules apply as for regular snippets,” Yandex experts explain. The search engine generates a snippet in accordance with the user's request, and if information from the description meta tag is not enough, Yandex will take the information from the site page.

You can read more about the rules for Yandex snippets in this article.

You should be careful, there is a chance that service information will get into the extended snippet: text from pagination buttons, filters, sorting, and more, so you should close it in the code with tags.

Jivosite chat in Yandex search results

A chat has also appeared in the Yandex snippet. Yandex together with Jivosite added a chat to the search results page. Starting April 26, 2018, customers can contact support for the site that has Jivosite chat installed without going to the site.

After connecting the chat, you can:

• enable or disable chat in search;
• add an automatic reply;
• add hints;
• add an icon;
• specify the opening hours of the organization and limit the number of pages on which the chat will be shown.

Instructions for adding a chat to your website are presented on the official website of the Jivosite service.

Chat type in search results

What the snippet "Chat with a company" looks like in the desktop version:

Please note that there are different icons for starting a chat for desktop and mobile versions.

After clicking on the "Chat with the company" button, a form for communicating with the support of the site appears directly on the search results page.

In the mobile version of search, the chat window opens on top of the current window, but not in a new tab.

An interesting feature of the chat is the saving of the history of the correspondence of an authorized user with site support on the other end of the Jivosite.

After sending the letter, the user has the opportunity to close the chat and continue searching for the information of interest:

After the site support responds to the user, a notification about a new message will appear on the right:

Pros and cons of chat

This snippet makes communication between the user and the organization more accessible. The user will be able to make a purchase or ask a question of interest without going to the site.

The downside is that if the operator is not online, and the client has sent a message, the operator will receive this message only when the customer is online the next time.

Also, the downside is that the chat on the search results page is not synchronized with the chat on the site itself. Imagine a situation: a couple of days ago a user wrote to support the site directly from the search results, and a week later decided to go to the site and clarify information about his question on the site itself. As a result, the operator may not understand what is happening and what issue in general is being discussed. An awkward situation, isn't it? The client will have to spend time on re-explaining the question, or he, not wanting to duplicate the appeal, will completely end the conversation. At the moment, there is no solution to this situation, let's hope that in the future, Yandex specialists, together with Jivosite, will find a way out.

Conclusion

Yandex does not stand still and constantly comes up with something interesting. This time, useful functions were added, snippets in Yandex acquired a new look and new capabilities. This will help improve the quality of information in search results.

If you do not have time, you can always contact us for help in installing this tool.

Yesterday, some people in our country suddenly discovered that. It was temporarily blocked by providers TTK, Akado, Avax and Sumtel at the direction of Roskomnadzor. But a significant proportion of the subscribers of these providers did not notice the blocking, as they use the domestic search engine.

IN april 2017 in "Yandex" looking for something 43 million people... If you are one of them, then this short article is for you.

P.S. For those who prefer Google and DuckDuckGo, there are links in the last section.

1. How to search among the sites of a certain city, region, federal district or country?

This is how you can find information on the request "ball of graduates" among the sites of the city of Bratsk:

graduation ball cat: 11000976

To find out the number to be dialed after the operator cat:, you need to add to 1100000 region code in Yandex.Catalogue. For example:

• Moscow - 1100001;
• Chernihiv - 1100966;
• Voronezh - 1100193;
• Volga region - 1100040;
• Kyrgyzstan - 1100207;
• CIS countries - 166.

There are already over 117 thousand sites in Yandex.Katalog. Similarly, you can search for something only among resources dedicated to a specific topic. To do this, instead of region codes, you must use topic codes and add 9,000,000 to them, instead of 1,100,000.

2. How to trick Yandex about your location?

Using a Chrome extension Manual Geolocation you can mark any point on the map and the search engine will think that you are there and adjust the search results in accordance with this data. For example, you can search for objects located near your home in St. Petersburg, but is located in Moscow. Convenient when planning trips.

This item is relevant for all sites that use your location data.

3. How to search for pages in a specific domain zone and in a specific language?

This is how you can find what Ukrainian sites write about zebras (in the ua domain zone) in Ukrainian:

zebra domain: ua lang: uk

Similarly, you can find out the opinion of sites of other states on various issues. Language codes for Yandex:

• russian (ru);
• ukrainian (uk);
• belarusian (be);
• english (en);
• french (fr)
• german (de);
• kazakh (kk);
• tatar (tt);
• turkish (tr).

4. How to search for pages on a specific site?

This is how you can search for pages only on the site:

zebra site: site

This is how you can search only among articles of certain categories. For example, among the questions in Rescue service website:

url messages: site / iNotes / q / *

And here's how to get a list of all tags that are used on the site:

5. How to search for pages created on a specific date?

This is how you can find pages created on a specific day:

steve jobs date: 20170617

And like this, in the interval between two dates:

steve jobs date: 20170610..20170617

And using the operator idate: you can search for pages by the date of the last indexing.

6. How to search for files of a certain type?

Search for a PDF book to download to iBooks:

flowers for algernon mime: pdf

And this is how you can find all MS Word documents with the mention of the word "declaration" on the FTS website:

mime declaration: docx site: nalog.ru

Types of documents that Yandex indexes:

• html;
• docx;
• xlsx;
• pptx;

7. How to search only in page titles?

With this operator:

It is very convenient when you need to find an article by its exact title.

8. How to search by image file name?

Save the picture to your computer, want to use it with the indication of the source, but don't remember where it came from? The search operator by the exact name of the image will help:

Operators for searching by attribute values \u200b\u200bof HTML tags:

applet: - code of the applet tag;
script: - src of the script tag;
object: - all object attributes;
action: - action of the form tag;
profile: - the profile of the head tag.

9. How do I find links to a specific page?

Yandex has an operator to search for mentions in a request within links. This way you can find links to a specific page.

inlink: ”www.site / iNotes / 533552 ″

10. How do I use widgets and tips?

If you type one of the four words below in the search, gadgets will appear below the search bar:

• "Calculator";
• "Currency Converter";
• "Unit Converter";
• "Transfer".

And for some queries, the answers are displayed directly in the search bar. Examples.

This week, August 22nd, Yandex launched a new version of search with the "Korolev" algorithm... It is based on a neural network, which allows it to compare the meaning of a request and a web page and respond to complex and ambiguous requests at times more accurately. To train the new version of search, search statistics and estimates of millions of people are used: it turns out that not only developers, but all users in general, contribute to the development of the system.
The presentation of "Korolev" took place, which is symbolic, in the Moscow planetarium. Andrey Styskin, Head of Yandex.Poisk, Alexander Safronov, Head of Relevance Service, Yandex.Poisk, and Olga Megorskaya, Head of Data Processing Department, Yandex.Poisk.

From Matrixnet to neural networks

Search engines appeared in the mid-90s of the last century, when the Internet was very small - only a few thousand sites. At first, search engines simply made a list of pages where there are specified words without problems with ranking according to the degree of compliance with the query. The more often words from the query are found in the document, the better. It is clear that with the current state of the global network, this will not work.

In Yandex, for processing queries, they came up with Matrixnet - a machine learning method with which the author's ranking formula was built. However, the search continued to rely on words. But what about queries that users formulate allegorically or associatively? Then the searched web page does not have to contain strictly all words from the query. But how can this be explained to a machine? I wish she understood us as a person ...

Eventually, scientists came up with something at the intersection of technology and biology - an artificial neural network (ANN). According to the wording of "Wikipedia", this is "a mathematical model, as well as its software or hardware implementation, built on the principle of the organization and functioning of biological neural networks - networks of nerve cells of a living organism." Neural networks are able to process information like us and, most importantly, learn and hone skills like living beings. Actually, they are the basis of a full-fledged artificial intelligence, the appearance of which is a matter of time.

Last year Yandex introduced the Palekh search algorithm based on a neural network. He showed excellent results in solving problems that were usually only within the power of humans: he coped perfectly with recognizing speech and objects in images. Palekh learned how to convert search queries and web page titles into groups of numbers - semantic vectors. Their important property is that vectors can be compared with each other: the stronger the similarity, the closer in meaning the request and the header are.

"Korolev". Who understands

The next step in the development of a search engine based on neural networks was the Korolev algorithm, which analyzes not only the title, but the entire page as well! The number of pages that the search compares in meaning to the query has grown from 150 documents to 200 thousand. Among other things, "Korolev" also began to take into account the meaning of other requests by which people on it go to the desired page.

The neural network learns like a child. To master this, she needed a huge number of examples. Actually, all users of the service were engaged in spontaneous training of Korolev in one way or another: search statistics and estimates of millions of people were used. Yandex is gradually learning to more and more accurately recognize semantic connections, like: [a picture where the sky swirls] - this is about a painting by Van Gogh, [a lazy cat
from Mongolia] - manul.

Search is a very complex system. Thousands of engineers work to ensure that she understands a person and helps to solve his problems. In Korolev, we have combined machine intelligence and the efforts of millions of people. Our users are improving search with us by asking questions and helping train our algorithms.
Andrey Styskin, Head of Yandex Search.

In addition to analyzing the daily routine, evaluations of the quality of responses are needed to train a search engine. The more complex the system, the more ratings are required. Whereas previously a relatively small group of expert assessors, members of the Yandex team, was involved in assessing the quality of search, now it was required to seriously increase the volume. This is how the service appeared Yandex.Toloki (Toloka is a form of mutual aid that the villagers once practiced). Any enthusiast interested in a small reward and, of course, in a sense of belonging to something important can do simple tasks. Now there are more than a million such tolokers, and the number of their ratings exceeded 2 billion.

“Modern search is based on complex algorithms. Algorithms are invented by developers, and taught by millions of Yandex users. Any request is an anonymous signal that helps the machine to better understand people. Therefore, we will not be mistaken if we say: the new search is a search that we did together, ”reads a blog entry on Yandex.

Over the more than two-year history of Yandex.Toloka's work, the most productive and diligent participant has been identified. Ilya Mikhalenko from Chelyabinsk became it. The guy came to the presentation of "Korolev" in Moscow to receive a well-deserved award from the hands of the search engine team.

New search in business

How is the improvement in the work of our Yandex expressed in practice? Now you can talk to him almost like a brainy and erudite friend. (Even in a voice.) For example, what will you do if you need to remember the name of a film from which you remember a passage, but the names of the actors and the director flew out of your head? You can contact your friends or ask for help on some thematic forum. And you can ask "Korolev"!

Image search has improved significantly. With them, as a rule, there is always some kind of "hell": the search engine either thoughtlessly gives out all the images in the title of which the words from the query are used, or takes into account the text of the article, which is illustrated by the picture. If you are looking for something that would meet the vague needs of the soul, then get ready to be disappointed. "Korolev" analyzes exactly what is shown in the picture, therefore it is able to please with a non-trivial approach.

As an example, tests cited not the most obvious request - [a cat in space]. Dogs were in orbit quite often, but they did not come out of the mustachioed, disciplined conquerors of space. Only one attempt is reliably known: in 1963, the French launched the cat Felicette into a suborbital flight. Romantic, but short-sighted, - as soon as the scientists open the hatch of the landed capsule, the murka was like that. The solemn photo session did not take place.

On request, the search engine gives out not only animals in spacesuits and surreal photo-toads, but a photo of a cat in a washing machine, which is quite similar to the hatch of a spaceship. But this is not said in the description.

For the ceremonial launch of the new search engine, the entire Yandex.Poisk team took the stage. A little countdown and ... Let's go! Now everyone can experience the capabilities of the discerning "Korolev". The main thing is that its current capabilities are not static, but are in constant development.

To end the evening, the organizers have in store something completely unexpected - a communication session with real cosmonauts from orbit. They personally answered some of the popular queries of search engine users about space and answered questions from those present.

While on the Yandex blog and on Habré there are hundreds of comments about the merits and demerits of the new algorithm, we will talk about the main thing: what it means for users, how to enable a new search and what, in fact, has changed.

Korolev as a new search

The main thing that you need to know about the Korolev algorithm for users who are not too immersed in the topic is that it is smart. He was presented like this: "Korolev is a machine intelligence that understands you." A search is built on a specially trained neural network. She searches not so much by words as by meaning. "Thanks to this, the search understands exactly what the user needs and answers difficult questions even more accurately," the developers say.

For example, if you enter the query "Darth Vader appears to this music," the search will first suggest listening to "Imperial March". And at the same time it will give information on the character of "Star Wars". Is it logical? Quite. To the query “a film in which an elderly man came to work to get a job,” the first response is a link to a review of the film “Intern”. He was meant. And you didn't have to remember the year, the actors, or even select the words and their order for the request.

The same goes for image searches. If earlier it was carried out using keywords from the description for pictures, now the algorithm analyzes the image itself. Therefore, if you enter the query "cat in space" - you will be shown not only funny creative works on this topic, but also, for example, a cat in the washing machine. Simply because there are all similar components: the cat is available, the door looks like a porthole, and the body looks like a rocket.

Last year Yandex took the first step towards meaningful search by implementing the Palekh algorithm. He knew how to match the meaning of the request and the title of the web page. "Korolev" analyzes not only the title, but the entire page as a whole. The number of pages that the search compares in meaning with the query has grown from 150 documents to 200 thousand pages. Another feature of "Korolev": it also takes into account the meaning of other requests for which people go to the page.

Why does Yandex say that it did it with my help?

Everything we do at Yandex: what queries we ask, which pages we go to, stay late, or leave (because we didn't find what we need) - is taken into account in search statistics. If you entered a request, followed the link in the search results and stayed on the page for a while, you probably found the information you need and read it. Data on the behavior of millions of users helps the neural network learn to understand the semantic proximity of the request and the found page.

It is also important for learning to consider the quality of the responses. Previously, Yandex evaluated the quality of search with the help of experts - assessors. Now the ratings of volunteers - users of Yandex.Toloka are also taken into account. This is a service where anyone can complete tasks, help improve search, and receive a reward for this.

How do I start using the new search?

Nothing special is required from you. The new search will work itself one way or another. But if you want to understand what is happening - just go to the main "Yandex", wind up to the "starry sky" and click on "Start". This way you will get acquainted with your own search behavior and will be able to watch the video about "Korolev", which explains how everything works. You can also just click on the Yandex logo to the left of the search bar and see a nice and understandable presentation.

Why "semantic" queries don't always work?

Naturally, first of all, the neural network learns to perceive popular queries - for example, about movies or music. It is about such queries that the search engine has the most data, they are asked by a large number of people. Something specific "Korolev" will also be able to learn, but this will happen a little later - when the information necessary for analysis is typed.

Full presentation