Site region
Site region 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 service centers using the query [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
- Which sites need regional assignment
- How to choose the right region for a website
- Region moderation
- Changing the site's region
- FAQ
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 about your organization to it. | Use recommendations for passing moderation. | |
| Yandex.Catalog | Yandex.Catalog isn't updated anymore Since March 26, 2018, regions linked to the website based on Yandex.Catalog are displayed in Yandex.Webmaster on the page, in the Webmaster block. |
| 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 about your organization to it. | Use recommendations for passing moderation. | |
| Yandex.Catalog | Yandex.Catalog isn't updated anymore Since March 26, 2018, regions linked to the website based on Yandex.Catalog are displayed in Yandex.Webmaster on the page, in the Webmaster block. |
Website region information is available on the 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) | |
| Site that offers services or products |
| 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) | |
| 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 located in Moscow but attracts clients from other regions, you can choose “Russia” or “Eurasia” 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. |
| 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 located in Moscow but attracts clients from other regions, you can choose “Russia” or “Eurasia” 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. |
- Your organization address, add it to Yandex.Business or use the Schema.org markup on the website. For more information, see the Information about the organization section.
- Product delivery region, use the Turbo pages technology.
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 check this on the page in Yandex.Webmaster.
Also follow the recommendations for setting up the site and placing contact information:
- 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
Add the name of the appropriate region to the subdomain URL (for example, spb.example.com).
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.
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.
To use subdomains:
Changing the site's region
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 whether the selected region matches the site content. Moderation can take 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 the moderation, choose a more suitable one and send the request again.
- Go to the page.
- In the Webmaster block, click the
icon. - Start typing the region name, such as city, and select one from the list.
- 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.
- Save your changes.
- 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).
- Go to the page.
- Click the No region button.
- Save your changes.
After the moderation, the changes will take effect within two weeks.
In this case, after moderation, the site is assigned the “Site is not currently geographically targeted” status. The changes take effect within two weeks.
FAQ
As a rule, you can assign only one region. Yandex.Webmaster can display several regions for a site placed in Yandex.Catalogue.
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.
View the recommendations for subdomains for the Yandex algorithms to take the region into account correctly. Also, see the Subdomain indexing section.
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.
