Site region

Site regionality can be taken into account when displaying search results for location-dependent requests. For example, when a user from Moscow searches for information about car servicing using the request [auto repair]. Most likely, they want to find the nearest car service garage. In this case, if the site is assigned the region Moscow or Russia, the site will be displayed in the search results.

Sources used for assigning a region

Source

Moderators

Note

Yandex Webmaster. You can specify the desired site region, and change it if you think that the region is determined incorrectly based on other sources.

Use the tips on choosing the region, as well as recommendations for passing moderation.

Yandex Business, if you added information there about your organization.

Use recommendations for passing moderation.

Yandex Catalog

Yandex Catalog isn't updated anymore. Since March 26, 2018, regions linked to the site based on data from Yandex Catalog are displayed on the Display in the search → Site region page in Yandex Webmaster, under Webmaster.

Note

If a region is assigned to the site, it doesn't exclude the site from search results in other regions. It can be found by users from any region if the site content is recognized as relevant to the queries.

The site region information is available on the Display in the search → Site region page in Yandex Webmaster.

Which sites need regional assignment

The need for regional linking depends on the site topic.

Type of site

Recommendations

Media site with general content

In this case, region linking is not necessary. It isn't detected automatically if the site doesn't specify a phone number, physical or legal address. If the region is detected, you can report to Yandex that the site doesn't need to be assigned a region.

Media site with regional content (for example, regional newspaper)
  1. Make sure that contact information and information about the region are placed on the site correctly.
  2. Specify your preferred region in Yandex Webmaster.

Site that offers services or products

If you think that the site doesn't need a regional link, use a special setting.

How to choose the right region for a website

If you want to specify the website region in Yandex Webmaster, the choice depends on the website specifics and your organization.

Organisation specifics

Recommendations

Organization with an address in one region

For example, if the site is about a beauty salon in Moscow, choose the “Moscow” region. If your organization is based in Moscow but attracts clients from other regions, you can choose “Russia” as a region. At the same time, the site must contain information that confirms such wide geographical coverage.

Store that delivers to different regions

Choose a region that covers all delivery regions. For example, if the store has legal address in Moscow, and delivers throughout Russia — select “Russia” as a region. At the same time, specify the cities where you can deliver products on the site.

Organization with offices in several regions

If you have one site, choose a region that covers all addresses of the offices. For example, “Russia”. The site must list all addresses.

If you use a separate domain or a subdomain for each office, specify the region for each site.

If you want your organization’s address to be displayed in the site snippet in the search results, add it to Yandex Business or use Schema.org markup on the site. For more information, see the Information about the organization section.

Region moderation

After you add or change data in Yandex Webmaster or Yandex Business, the moderator checks it for compliance with the content of your website. To make sure that it passes moderation:

  • Contacts and delivery information are placed in a prominent position.
  • The site is accessible and its pages are displayed correctly.
  • The site is virus free. You can find information about this on the Website optimization → Site security page in Yandex Webmaster.

Also follow the recommendations for setting up the site and placing contact information:

The organization operates in a single region

  • Specify the full address of your organization on the site, including the postal code and the city phone code. Do not place the address and the phone only as an image.

  • If the site has a regional focus, add more information relevant to this region.

  • If your site has regional versions, the content that the user sees may vary depending on the region they came to the site from. In this case, the site region is identified by the user's IP address. For example, your company has offices in different cities. Users from Moscow and Khabarovsk will see different versions of the website.

    The Yandex robot crawls the site from a certain IP address of a particular region. Therefore, it will receive only one version of the site. As a result, some of the content won't be indexed.

    To index the entire site, we recommend that you make all pages accessible to the robot, regardless of its IP address. How to detect the Yandex search robot

The organization has offices in different regions

If your organization has several regional offices, specify the addresses and phone numbers of each of them on the site. As a result, the site can be assigned multiple regions. You can also use subdomains. This will allow the user to see how the main site and the regional site are related.

Alert

Make sure the content of a subdomain differs from that of the primary domain. If their content is completely duplicated or is only slightly different, one of the URLs will be recognized as a secondary mirror of the other one. The Yandex robots will then start treating two sites as one. As a result, the site recognized as the secondary mirror will be excluded from the search results.

To use subdomains:

  • Add the name of the appropriate region to the subdomain URL (for example, spb.example.com).

  • Publish full contact details of the organization in the region and add the regional office in Yandex Business. After that, the region information will become available in Yandex Webmaster as well.

  • A regional subdomain should contain information for the users from the region.

  • A regional subdomain should be included in the navigation on the main site so that the user could go from the main page to the regional page.

Changing the site's region

Note

By default, if you specify a region for a secondary mirror, it won’t be assigned to the main site address. Specify the region for the main site address separately for it to be considered in search results. You can set the region for the secondary mirror when moving the site to the new address. The region will be assigned when the new site address becomes the main one.

In Yandex Webmaster, you can change the website region or set it if it isn't assigned. After you send the region information, the moderator checks if the chosen region corresponds to the information on the site. Moderation lasts from several days to several weeks.

To pass the moderation successfully, read the recommendations on setting up the site and adding contact information.

If the region is rejected after checking, choose a more suitable one and send the request again.

Change or set the region specified in Yandex Webmaster
  1. Go to Display in the search → Site region.
  2. In the Webmaster block, click the icon.
  3. Start typing the region name, such as city, and select one from the list.
  4. In the field, specify the link to the site page with the contact details. The moderator will use it to check whether the site region is selected correctly.
  5. Save your changes.

After the moderation, the changes will take effect within two weeks.

Change the region assigned from the Yandex Business data

Edit your organization’s card in Yandex Business. In Yandex Business, make sure that:

  • The site address is the same as in Yandex Webmaster: either with or without the www prefix and with the HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
  • The main page of the site is specified (for example, http://example.com).

The information in Yandex Webmaster will be updated within a few days.

Specify that the site doesn't need a regional link
  1. Go to Display in the search → Site region.
  2. Click the No region button.
  3. Save your changes.

In this case, after moderation, the site is assigned the “Site is not currently geographically targeted” status. The changes take effect within two weeks.

Questions and answers

How do I assign multiple regions?

As a rule, you can assign only one region. Yandex Webmaster can display several regions for a site included in Yandex Catalog.

The region is assigned based on the actual address of the company specified on the site. If your company has offices in several regions, check out recommendations for choosing a region. You can also add your website to Yandex Business: this way the region is assigned automatically.

How do I use regions for subdomains?

View the recommendations for subdomains for the Yandex algorithms to take the region into account correctly. Also, see the Subdomain indexing section.

How does the region affect the site's ranking in search results?

The assigned region is only one of the factors that affect the site ranking for queries from different regions. Link to a particular region doesn't exclude a site from search in other regions — it can be found from any region if it is relevant to the query.

If your site fails take the desired position in the search for a long time, read the recommendations in the How do I improve the site ranking in the search? section.

Learn more

Contact support

Make sure that:

  • All fields are filled in.

  • The link you specified matches the URL of the site for which you add or change the region (including the use of the HTTP/HTTPS protocol and the www prefix).

The fields are filled in correctly, but the button is inactive

The region change is on moderation for a week. If the region doesn't change two weeks after the the moderation is completed, fill out the form below.

Use a special form in Yandex Business Help.

Make sure that:

  • The website is added to Yandex Webmaster and Yandex Business in the same way (with or without the "www" prefix, and with the HTTPS or HTTP protocol).

  • The main website page is added to Yandex Business without UTM tags.

  • The organization card is displayed in Yandex Business and in Yandex Maps.

  • More than a week passed since the card was published or edited in Yandex Business.

In this case, you can correct the error only in Yandex Business. Contact support via the form in Yandex Business Help.




You can also go to

A query that is related to a specific region. For example, [taxi] or [buy iphone]. Learn more

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