Search suggestions as a quick way to increase the semantic core. Yandex promotion strategy

Search Suggestions- these are query options offered by search engines to users under the search string, which complement and facilitate the formulation of the original query. It is enough to enter the beginning of a word or phrase, and additional clarifying search queries will appear in a pop-up window.

Formation of search hints

Search suggestions are formed on the basis of complex search engine algorithms. Some factors that influence the listing of query hints are:

• Search phrase frequency. As a rule, search engines offer the most popular and high-frequency "tails" to the original query.
• Regionality. First of all, this applies to commercial requests. For example, if a user is looking for concrete in St. Petersburg, he does not need hints with occurrences of other cities (but there are exceptions).
• Personalization. Based on user query statistics, search history and other personalized information known to the search engine.
• Relevance. Especially for requests related to the latest news. Therefore, tips are updated regularly.

Use of search suggestions in website promotion

With search suggestions, you can:

• expand the semantic core;
• optimize the structure of the site;
• get additional traffic to the site;
• track changes in the relevance of medium- and low-frequency queries.

Important! Due to the regular updating of search hints, they need to be regularly monitored and recompiled.

Case from our practice

Online dipped traffic to one of the important landing pages. It turned out that over time, search suggestions changed a lot, as a result of which the frequency of requests was redistributed. As a result, there was a need change page optimization for more frequent tips.

It is worth remembering that the tips may contain "long requests" that may be more popular than short ones.

Collection of search suggestions

Tip parsing

One of the most popular parsers for SEO professionals is the Key Collector.

To collect search hints in this program, just click on the following icon:

In the window that opens, you can select the search engine from which you want to parse search suggestions. It is also possible to enable the word ending selection function:

The following settings are available in the hint parsing settings:

• Parsing depth - the number of iterations of collecting search hints. Those. if this indicator is set to 0, then a single collection of hints according to the specified settings will be performed. If 1 - then the system will collect hints for each phrase collected for the first time, which greatly increases the parsing time. Therefore, it is recommended to set the value no more than 0.
• A tick in the item "Collect only top tips" is equivalent to a simple manual input of a phrase without spaces. Those. there will be few hints, parsing will be done extremely quickly.
• The character set for enumeration of endings allows you to determine the necessary characters for this purpose: Cyrillic, Latin and numbers. For example, when you enter the word "hint", the system will automatically substitute the selected characters. The final list of hints will include both phrases containing "hints" and hints. It is obvious that this option is necessary when initially specifying incomplete phrases.
• The character set for enumeration of phrases allows you to set the necessary characters for enumeration at the end of the phrase, separated by a space. For example, when all three checkboxes are checked, when entering the words "hint", the program will iterate over "hint a", "hint b", "hint c" ..., "hint a", "hint b", "hint c" ..., "hint 0", "hint 1", "hint 2"...
• The support of the selected letters before the given phrase allows you to make supports not only at the end, but also before the original phrase, separated by a space. Those. in the above example, "a hint", "b hint", "c hint", etc.
• Setting delays between requests allows you to adjust the waiting time between requests sent by the program. You should not set too short a time, as you can pay for the speed of parsing by blocking the IP address.
• The number of threads determines how many threads will parse hints. It is not recommended to set this value to more than 1. Read more about setting the number of threads and proxy servers here.

Whereas before, the Yandex PS region could be selected from the settings window for parsing search suggestions.

Clue: To determine the most effective hints - collect their exact frequency - "[!words!from!hints]" instead of the general one:

Search hint cheat

The point of cheating a search hint is that when typing a highly competitive query in the tips, the user will have the brand or query you need, for which the promoted page is well optimized.

Usually, tips are cheated by Internet users for money through special platforms by entering the necessary query into the Yandex or Google search box.

This method of promotion belongs to blacks. Its use is highly discouraged, as it can be penalized by search engines. In addition, search engines regularly remove cheated tips.

Using search suggestions in website promotion is a necessary task for any SEO specialist. Competent optimization of documents, taking into account search suggestions, will help you get more targeted organic traffic. We recommend updating search suggestions at least once every 2 months, if you do it less regularly, you risk losing or not getting a significant share of search traffic.

• Check the list of search suggestions for priority queries at least once every two months,
• Include search suggestions in the semantic core of the site,
• Respond in a timely manner to changes in the frequency of prompts,
• Take a reasonable approach to choosing a landing page for a search hint: study the search results, analyze which document of your site can more fully answer the user’s question, if there is no such document, create it,
• In some cases, the direct entry of the search hint into the metadata and text of the document is not enough; content expansion may be required.

Today, a slightly shocking headline, for the purpose of experimenting with screaming headlines, let's see how much I can scream on the Internet. And if on the topic, then in fact Yandex began to trust webmasters more and allowed them to manage one function of their search. Has Yandex revealed its secrets and makes it possible for webmasters to manage the issuance? ..

Yes figs there - relax. Naturally issue management, Yandex did not pass it on to anyone. It turns out that I deceived you with the title of this post. Actually, not really. Yandex has really taken a step towards meeting webmasters and now they will be able to better customize the site search from Yandex. That is, the function of managing search suggestions has now been added to the search settings, and now every site owner who uses site search from the Yandex search engine will be able to configure search suggestions.

What is Yandex search suggestions and what does the issue management have to do with it? Search Suggestions is a drop-down list of key phrases when the user enters a query. In general, I wanted to say that this is a list of words that Yandex offers when you enter a query into a search. You must have seen them.

But how does this relate to issuance management? Actually, indirectly. But still connected. Yes, and keep in mind that I don’t mean the general issue of Yandex, I mean the issue of your site. That is, if you use the site search from the leader of Runet, then when the user is on your site and starts entering his query, search suggestions appear that can help the user find what he wants, because now we can configure them, and means to influence the issuance of search results on the site. What can be called the management of the issuance of Yandex.

So, let's see how it works and what benefits we get from it. First, install the site search from Yandex, if it is not already installed. If it is installed, then you need to perform a minimum of actions, namely: go to the search management, select which you want to edit and in the menu, select "search suggestions" on the left.

Here we can choose to show hints or not. Select language. And of course add, remove or move Yandex search suggestions. To do this, you need to start typing a query, thereby imagining yourself in the user's place. For example, a visitor wants to find information on installing dle, but not everyone will enter the request in full, because “laziness” will not allow this. That's for them and prompts are created so that they can choose, and not enter the query in full. So, for example, we simply enter dle and what do we see? The search offers us rather strange options, well, to be honest, complete garbage, which has nothing to do with my site, and even more so with installing or configuring dle .

But now we can correct this situation and simply remove the unnecessary and add the necessary, as well as swap requests - put some higher, some lower. And this is convenient and really Yandex search suggestions can affect the issue. After all, if the visitor does not enter the query further and does not find a suitable option in the drop-down list, he can simply leave. And with the help of the management ability, we can correct the situation and the user will select the phrase he needs from the list and stay on the site to read the article, which in turn can affect behavioral factors and, accordingly, the main Yandex.

And here is what you can get as a result by editing hints. And a small instruction for editing.

And to change requests in places, just hold down the left mouse button and drag to the right place. And don't forget to save the results.

That's it. I hope no one was upset that it would not be possible to manage the issuance of Yandex and move your site to the top. Then what would be the interest? In general, good luck to everyone, that's all for me. Search suggestions Yandex, to help you.

Well, of course, all of you see search suggestions on your smartphone 100,500 times a day. It is worth entering a couple of letters in the search bar, as different variants of words and phrases immediately appear. It remains to click on the appropriate request and go to the issue page.

And now let's go from the other side. For example, you are an entrepreneur and want to use search suggestions as a promotional tool.

First, let's talk a little about how search engines form hints.

1. Let's start with the fact that in general all sent user requests are accumulated in the system.
2. All of them go through multi-stage filtration. Extremely rare requests, obscene language are eliminated, words with typos are corrected.
3. Similar queries are grouped based on common features (taking into account morphology, synonyms, for example, “hotels in Kazan” and “Kazan hotels”). This also takes into account that the combined queries give identical search results.

How is the list of hints displayed?

1. The search engine analyzes the popularity of queries for the current day (the frequency of entering in the search bar), including the number of their mentions in the content of various sites.
2. It takes into account the user's region and his interests (query history, visited pages).
3. Based on these data, it generates a list of relevant tips: Yandex - from ten requests, Google - from four.

All this happens in a fraction of a second, while the user begins to enter the first letters of the query into the search bar.

Conclusion: To get into the hints, you must fulfill the following conditions:

• achieve a high frequency of entering a query in the search;
• get a large number of mentions of the query in the content of third-party sites.

How can a brand get into tips?

If you ensure that users have high interest in your brand and encourage them to search for information about you (and share it online), then with a high degree of probability you can get into tips. The task becomes easier if you work in a low-competition environment.

No artificial cheats! This is the most important rule to follow in order to avoid search engine penalties.

There are agency services where hired users perform a task for money: they repeatedly enter the specified query during the search period. Often such users will be replaced by the program. This can work and your brand will show up in tooltips for a short time. However, the search engine will easily recognize cheating (for example, by the same IP addresses) and will remove the query from the hints.

Apply well-known marketing techniques! The only legitimate way to bring the brand to the tips is to deploy marketing activity, to draw the attention of the audience to your company. All methods come down to increasing brand awareness, which will naturally lead to an increase in the number of brand queries in the search.

Advice. Content marketing works well for brand promotion (placing non-advertising materials on third-party resources, social networks). Create interesting videos, write articles, reviews, reviews. This is how you introduce users to your company and services. They will start talking about you, respectively, looking for information in the search.

I will share one of our cases of brand promotion.

Moscow vegetarian cafe

The campaign was carried out in order to increase the awareness of non-standard format cafes (the growth in the number of branded queries in the search was estimated). The target audience is middle-aged men and women (including families) leading a healthy lifestyle, as well as urban creative youth who are attentive to what and where they eat (Moscow region).

The following venues have been chosen:

• top bloggers (Lena Miro and Masha Kir);
• sites with millions of attendance ("Lifehacker");
• large urban communities (The Village, Dirty.ru);
• trendy YouTube channels (JustVell);
• women's communities ("Country of Moms", "Babyblog");
• creative communities VKontakte ("Suffering Middle Ages").

The materials for the publications were full of useful information both about the food and the establishment itself and were created in the form of illustrated reviews, a video from the cafe, an official release (on behalf of the owner), recipes (see picture), comments in the threads about Moscow cafes.

The audience coverage was about 67,000 unique users. The cost of the campaign is 50,000 rubles. The average cost of a click is 9 rubles (targeted transitions of interested users who viewed the location map and got acquainted with the menu, promotions and the weekend program).

Bottom line: in four months, the number of branded queries has significantly increased in the search (see Fig.).

How else to use tips for promotion?

You can promote in tips not only the brand name, but also those queries for which your site is already in the TOP-10.

What are the advantages? Thus, you bring users one step closer to your site, encourage them to ask those queries for which you are guaranteed to be on the first page of search results.

For example, your site is in 3rd place in Yandex for a low-frequency query "natural products for a healthy diet in Yekaterinburg". If you provide this query with a high citation and frequency of input in the search in the target region, then it can get into tips and work to attract traffic.

The mechanics of promotion in branded and commercial prompts are different. In the second case, you need to achieve accurate query input in the search, which will require the use of user power.

Advice. To encourage users to enter a target query without resorting to cheat services, you can go for a little trick. First, ask friends and acquaintances to punch this query in the search. This will be quite natural and will not cause questions from search engines. Secondly, to distribute a link to search results in social networks and motivate clicks on it, thereby increasing the frequency of displaying results for this query.

findings

Getting a brand into search suggestions is a simple matter. This right can be earned only through complex work:

• conduct marketing activities (videos, posts, articles, reviews, advertising),
• to ensure the high quality of the site and proper service.

The most difficult will be companies that operate in popular commercial niches (for example, electronics and technology) and compete with market giants. On the contrary, retailers, manufacturers and service providers in a narrow segment (including in the regions) can easily direct their efforts to hit the tips and get obvious benefits from this.

Search suggestions are variants of the most popular queries that start with the same letters as your query and appear in a block below the search bar.

The list of hints is updated as characters are entered in the search bar.

If one of the hints matches your query, select it from the list using the mouse or the Up/Down keys and press the Enter key to proceed to the search. If necessary, you can refine the request by supplementing the text of the selected hint.

Tips are generated from a stream of requests to Yandex. To them are added the names of encyclopedia articles, musical compositions and other relevant content. In addition to the query text itself, search suggestions may contain links to sites and ready-made answers to your question.

Suggestions may be based on the location and personal interests of the user, if allowed in the relevant settings.

Answers in hints

Yandex can provide answers to popular queries directly in search suggestions. For example, you can find out the depth of Lake Baikal or the height of Everest without going to the search results. In this case, you will receive an answer even before you enter the request in full.

Links to sites

If you want your favorite sites to be highlighted in search suggestions, enable the option Show sites you visit frequently on the search suggestion settings page.

If you notice an inaccuracy in the description of the site, report it to the Yandex support service.

Current queries in the search bar (for mobile Yandex)

Actual requests are what Internet users are most concerned about at the moment, and what they are looking for in Yandex. You can see the current request on your mobile phone:

The actual query is updated every hour.

If you are interested in the proposed topic, click the Find button. A page with search results for this query will open.

To enable (disable) the display of the current query in the search bar:

Yandex search suggestions save users time every day. You do not need to drive in the request completely, Yandex will highlight the continuation of the word or phrase. It remains only to click on the desired hint.

What are the clues

Full text work in the desktop version, because a person types quickly on the keyboard. It is easier for him to type part of the query, and then select the desired option from the prompts.

Word implemented in the web version of Yandex.Browser and mobile applications. The user enters one word and then selects words from the list provided by clicking on a single word. With a long query, the phrase is typed word by word separately. Each search hint can be deleted by clicking on the cross next to the phrase.

Factoid hints. In mobile search, weather, traffic jams, facts are automatically highlighted immediately when you enter a query. When the user enters the weather in Moscow, the current temperature is highlighted below the search bar as a tooltip. In Yandex.Video, hints contain series and individual episode numbers. First, the user selects a season, then an episode of that season. When you enter the title of a movie, the tooltips show a direct link to the movie.

Long. In 2017, there were significant changes in Yandex search suggestions. The main innovation is related to the processing of long queries. Since 2016, there has been a trend - users began to enter search queries up to seven words long into the search bar. At the end of 2017, the share of long queries is 10%. Therefore, now long queries are highlighted, and such tips work in search, pictures and videos.

Historical. Queries that the user has already entered are remembered by the system and highlighted in priority in the search. Previously, historical hints worked only in the desktop version, now they are available on mobile phones and in Yandex search services. If the user was looking for something under his login, then, having logged in on another device, he will see the history of his requests.

How tips are calculated in Yandex

Offline metrics are not based on user actions. They are calculated through mathematical formulas. The calculation is based on the assumption that the user will immediately select the desired hint as soon as he sees it. After entering the request, the total number of user actions is calculated. This metric is called ExpectedActionsCount or EAC.

The second indicator GuessProbability calculates the ratio of "correct" clues to the total number of clues. “Correct” hints are word hints that are visible to the user before entering the next word in the query.

The first and second indicators are correlated with each other. If EAC decreases, then GuessProbability increases. Analyzing both metrics, the search algorithm builds bigrams from words - stable phrases of two or three words that users usually enter together: Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower.

The average length of characters in Yandex queries is 19, so when search suggestions are disabled, the user must perform an average of 19 actions when entering each search query. After the introduction of hints, the number of actions decreased to 13.5. At the end of 2017, the indicator is 11.5.

Online metric. Yandex uses the "typing time per query character" indicator. It is not subject to seasonal demand. This metric tests the usability of hints. For example, when testing the interface in the form of a graph, it was found that the speed decreased significantly. Users began to look at the suggested hints too often, and as a result, they entered the request much more slowly. The solution, which initially looked revolutionary, in practice slowed down people's search.

How to get hints

It is believed that users trust a brand more if they see it among Yandex search suggestions. We cannot agree with this, because the query selection algorithm is based, among other things, on the popularity of the word. Yandex does not conduct reputational expertise.

It selects the words and phrases that are most often entered into the search bar. Therefore, brands and companies that have appeared in high-profile scandals will also be in the tips. Moreover, most likely, they will be on the top lines, because there is a hype around them now, and Yandex updates “hot” queries every half hour. For example, in the network scandals of the pre-holiday week of February 2018, two brands appeared: the Zenden shoe manufacturer and the DNS digital equipment store. Both are at the top of the tooltips.

Companies cannot influence the inclusion of their name in the list of tips. Agencies offering such services are usually engaged in "cheating" a request in the search. This is done with the help of special programs or by the hands of numerous freelancers. Although the brand's inclusion in the list of tips is the result of the competent work of the PR department. We advise you to develop the brand in traditional ways. The more recognizable and in demand the company and its products are, the faster their names will get into Yandex tips. This is especially true for regional companies, because the competition in Yandex regional search is lower.

Conclusion

Yandex plans to develop search suggestions in the direction of simplifying the search. The search engine wants to achieve a result so that the answer to the user's query already appears at the time the query is entered. In mobile search, it is planned to add search by phone data: bookmarks, contacts, files. The algorithm for selecting hints is regularly improved. A permanent search engine team is working on it, which tests innovations almost every month.

A guaranteed way for a company to get on the list of requests is to use classic PR tools and develop brand awareness. The more consumers will be interested in the company's products over a long period of time, the more often the brand will be present in the list of tips. Tip cheats are not effective. When the promotion is stopped, the brand is again excluded from the hints.

The material was prepared by Svetlana Sirvida-Llorente.