Rating and reviews
The rating and reviews can be displayed for sites that Yandex has identified as:
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Online store.
A user can click the rating in search results to view detailed information and read reviews.
Ratings and reviews help users navigate search results and choose the best offers. Sellers can compare their sites with others by rating and respond to user reviews to improve retention and the quality of their site.
Where the rating is displayed
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In snippets of sites in search results.
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On the Site information page. The link to this page is available in Yandex search results (in the site's snippet, click → Site information).
How the rating is calculated
The average rating is updated regularly and calculated based on the ratings and reviews that users leave:
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In Yandex Browser.
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In Yandex Maps: reviews related to online shopping or to the site in general are included in the calculation.
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On their public pages.
For each rating, the following is taken into account:
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The rating's recency (if there are enough recent ratings, the older ones are not included in the calculation).
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The expertise of the user who gave the rating.
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Whether Yandex has information about the purchase at the online store or provision of the service on the site.
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Whether the rating is supported by a detailed review where the user shares their feedback on using the site.
Reviews
Users may leave reviews of stores, service sites, or service aggregators along with their ratings. Before appearing in Yandex services, the reviews are checked for compliance with the rules.
You can read reviews and respond to them:
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In Yandex Webmaster, on the Reviews and ratings page (the On site tab).
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On the Site information page.
Learn more about handling reviews.
Questions and answers
A site has many low ratings, but the average rating is high (or vice versa)
The average rating reflects the current state of a site, not its entire history.
The site may also have older ratings displayed that aren't used when calculating its average rating anymore. If the site has a high average rating despite many low historical ratings, it may mean it has improved its service over the last three months.
A site has no average rating
At the moment, the site neither has enough reviews and ratings for calculating its average rating nor enough signals for using the rating prediction algorithm.
The average rating of a site has dropped
In the current rating, the factors described above carry a lot of weight. For example, consider that ratings supported by reviews or given by expert users are generally lower than ratings without reviews. Similarly, ratings left in the past three months are more important than older ratings.
A snippet is a block of information about a web page shown in search results. The snippet includes the title and description of the page, and may also contain additional information about the site.