MOSCOW, Dec. 12, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX), one of the largest European internet companies operating Russia's most popular search engine and most visited website, has implemented search personalisation. Now one of Europe's leading search engines will fetch search results and make search suggestions based on the individual interests and preferences of each of its users. Having searched for 'Harry Potter' on Yandex, a book lover will see links to the book on top of the search results, while those who prefer the film or the game will be directed to results related to their respective interests. Personalised search is part of Yandex's new search platform, Kaliningrad.
To understand the search intentions of its users, Yandex analyses their online behaviour including their search history, clicks on search results and their language preferences. The search engine uses this information to make search suggestions and rank search results individually tailored for each user. A football fan, for instance, will see in his personal search suggestions other related queries typically made by football fans, while someone who enjoys watching films online, will be offered links to streaming websites among other search results. Personalised search significantly improves the quality of the search experience for the user – they instantly reach their search goal and save their time.
"Different people using similar key words in their searches are often looking for something different. We found a way to apply our knowledge of each user to offer them the best possible search result for their personal search intentions. Personalised search individually tunes results for each and every user based on what it knows about them from previous actions the user performed online. It improves the quality of search results for about 75-80% search queries," says Denis Rogachevsky, lead developer for Personalised Search at Yandex.
Search personalisation is enabled by default for every active user of Yandex Search. The more searches the user makes, the better results they receive. The personalised search feature can be easily disabled in the search engine's settings.
The current personalised search engine was preceded by the company's search platform Reykjavik, launched last year, which delivered search results based on the user's language preferences. After that, Yandex released a number of products that made the search experience for its users more personalised – the search engine started to add the user's previous searches and frequently visited web sites to their search suggestions. Each of these innovations became part of Yandex's personalised search engine and was implemented in its latest edition – the Kaliningrad search platform.
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