Today we set off on another long journey along the ornate paths of search engine development ( Яndex, Yandex). I think that the domestic giant of network search has long ago grown to such a level that it is not too lazy to dig all its lobbies, remember how the Yandex search engine developed, what was interesting over the years of its existence.
Moreover, it receives a lot of visitors from the Yandex search engine. Many of them are leaving for contextual advertising, I recently accepted the blog, so I believe that this company is more than worthy of a big publication about it.
If we take into account the Russian Internet, then here Yandex is the undisputed leader. In Russia, this is the first search engine in terms of importance. There are regional search engines, a kind of branches in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan. Yandex is very popular among residents of these countries. I can judge this at least by statistics, seeing that a lot of visitors come from other regions.
Currently Yandex is not only a search engine, it is also numerous services that can be accessed by absolutely all users of this search engine. Here you can find the necessary information and navigate the choice of leisure activities, find pictures, goods, compare prices, watch the weather, communicate on a social network, watch the schedule of TV programs, transport. There are numerous corporate solutions. You can even go to Narod.ru. Yandex has a convenient system that implements functionality for working with your sites. Among the latest available innovations of the service - which remained paid for a long time, but in December 2011 this service became available to absolutely everyone.
You can go on about the wonderful technologies and useful services of Yandex for a very, very long time. Therefore, for the convenience of perceiving information, I will break our journey into components. I will describe the entire path of the search engine in chronological order by year - from its creation to the present time.
Yandex development history
1980s - 1990s
History of Yandex development takes root in the now distant 80s, the existence of the USSR. It was then that the development of software for search in the Arcadia company began for the first time. The work was carried out under the leadership of Arkady Borkovsky and Arkady Volozh. It was that first search technology received the name "Яndex". And the Yandex site itself, the same one that we can see today, appeared in 1996. The developments that were carried out at that time were recognized as promising, as a result of which the management of CompTek (sale of computers and components) and the developers of the system decided on the advisability of further developing the technology and introducing it to the masses. In this regard, a concept for the development of the project was prepared, aimed at a wide audience.
Yandex was officially announced only on September 23, 1997. And in fact, at first it was one of the divisions of CompTek International. That is, independence there was generally a gulkin's nose. And only in 2000 Yandex became the company that you can see it today. In the sense that the company has already become completely independent. Independent Yandex.
By the way, long before the announcement of the search engine Yandex, the companies came up with a name. Yandex - means "Language index". If translated from English, it turns out "Yet Another indexer". True, later, as the search engine developed, other interpretations began to appear. For example, if you translate the first letter (I - I) from English into Russian in the English Index, you get "Яndex".
They came up with the name "Yandex" Ilya Segalovich (current director of technology), and Arkady Volozh
A year before the official release of the company, on October 18, 1996, the Netcom'96 exhibition took place, at which CompTek presented the first products of the developing search engine. These were Yandex.Site and Yandex.Dict. Then, six months later, Yandex.CD appeared - searching for documents on CD-ROM, and then the Yandex.Lib project started. It was a Yandex package library intended to be embedded in all kinds of applications and databases.
At the time when Yandex.ru was officially presented to the public, the following can be distinguished from the interesting:
Assessment of the relevance of documents. At that time, Yandex was pretty good at finding copies and excluding them. At the same time, documents were searched in various encodings.
Search by exact word form. Yashka knew how to search based on morphology
Search based on distance. Yandex was able to search within a paragraph, by exact phrases
Functioned core for assessing the relevance of pages. For each request, documents were selected taking into account their relevance (relevance) to the request. In addition, when selecting documents for search results, the frequency (density) of the keyword on the page was taken into account. By the way, precisely because of the imperfection (at that time) of this algorithm, pages densely packed with keywords appeared in the top of the search results, in fact without meaning.
Also, the search took into account the distance between words, and how the words are located in the document.
Yandex website design
The very first design for the Yandex site was rather primitive and imperfect. It was developed by the well-known Artemy Lebedev. He looked like this
By the way, the Yandex forum was opened in the same year. It was intended for communication between system users and developers. The idea was good and the forum functioned well. True, it existed until 2008. Then there was a slight reshuffle of priorities. As far as I can tell, the preference was given to socialization. In addition, Yandex began to actively develop its own social network, on the basis of which the current blog appeared, where all Yandex announcements are published, and where, in fact, users communicate with developers. You can see for yourself, the old forum url ( http://forum.yandex.ru/yandex/) today redirects to the well-known http://webmaster.ya.ru/.
1998 year
The project, which got started, showed good potential, they continued to work on it. In 1998, the search engine was improved, and many other functionalities were introduced for users. In particular, it became possible to search in the found, search for similar documents and much more. Work is also underway on the design of the Yandex home page. Now she has changed a little
As you can see, outwardly, nothing has changed much. To a greater extent, technical work was carried out
1999 year
Over the year, the audience of the Russian share of the Internet has grown significantly. Together with it, the quality and technology of Yandex have grown, the developers have introduced many improvements. The Yandex search engine has introduced a new search bot, which significantly increased the speed of crawling documents on the web.
The innovations that affected the user parts of the functionality were as follows:
Now you can search more specifically - by annotations, signatures, pictures, titles
We have introduced a search restriction for a group of sites
Separately highlighted documents in Russian
By the way, it was in 1999 that the well-known concept (thematic citation index) was first introduced to everyone today. True, then it was calculated rather primitively. The authority of the site (aka TIC) depended to a greater extent on the number of sites that linked to the domain of interest to us.
The design of the main page, by the way, has also changed. Now it has become already something more similar to the current one.
It was in 1999 and another significant event. It was then that a free website builder appeared, better known to all of us as Narod.ru (free hosting and file sharing). By the way, this project still exists. The motto of this project was as follows - in 60 seconds.
year 2000
Perhaps it was the introduction of new services that allowed Yandex to reach a fundamentally new level of development. Over time, the search engine firmly cemented its status, which made it possible significantly. In fact, it was already a new project, not the one that started under the auspices of CompTek.
In 1999, Arkady Volozh, realizing the prospects for the development of the project, began to engage only in promoting Yandex. But the difficulty at the same time was that it was necessary to find experienced partners who would have the skills of corporate building. The only difficulty was that it was necessary to find such partners who would invest in the development of the project, but at the same time would not require a complete transfer of management to their own authority.
And such a partner was found. It was the company ru-Net Holdings... In the spring of 2000, an investment agreement was signed with this company. Here, however, there were some casualties. A certain share of the search engine still had to be given. According to the agreement, 1/3 of the search engine left the company. That is, from that moment on Yandex ceased to be a structural division of CompTek, but became an independent company, which had its own offices, its own management, its own budget, etc. Arkady Volozh became the CEO of the company.
I think Yandex was very lucky with its first head, because Volozh turned out to be not only a specialist in finding potential partners, but also a good innovator. After the start of an independent "voyage" in the company, tremendous changes began. The staff has significantly increased, and the resource itself has received a new kick from its leaders.
In total, ru-Net Holdings invested about $ 5 million. What can I say, the deal turned out to be very profitable, especially considering the fact that today the number one search engine in the Russian Internet will cost at least several hundred million dollars. This is at the most conservative estimate.
The year 2000 became significant also for the reason that it was in this year that Yandex's multiportality began to emerge more clearly, because many services began to appear that were not directly tied to search. Such services are Yandex.News, Yandex.Mail, Postcards, a search bar at ya.ru. In addition, there were many services that later merged, becoming what we know today as Yandex.Market. In addition, another significant innovation was the introduction of specialized software for integration into user browsers - Yandex Bar.
year 2001
This year became a turning point, because in 2001 Yandex became the leader of the Russian Internet in terms of attendance. In addition, the amount of information stored on the company's servers has grown. Its size was 1 terabyte. By the way, Yandex.Pictures appeared this year as well. In addition, the Yandex.Money electronic payment system appeared.
In addition, the design of the Yandex home page has been significantly improved. Links to new services and news appeared here. We can say that, in general, the outlines of today's Yandex have already appeared.
2002 year
This year, the developers have been actively working to improve the communication service - Yandex.Mail. A lot of work has been done to filter the correspondence. 2002 was the year of the merger of three services - Goods, Guru and Pick into one - Yandex.Market. By the way, you can see for yourself that this service is very relevant even today. Perhaps for the first time in all the years of investing in 2002 there was a goal - to reach self-sufficiency. It was necessary to develop a strategic system for monetizing the project. Moreover, one that would bring stable and large profits in the long term. It has become such a model, and it is precisely the income that the company began to receive from this advertising model that made it possible to reach self-sufficiency much earlier than expected. Therefore, we can say that 2002 was a turning point in terms of entering a business-oriented model, which, moreover, has already begun to bear fruit.
2003 year
Active work on the Yandex.Mail service continued this year. Here, the next massive changes were introduced that affected all users of the system. Of course, Ya. Mail has become more functional and convenient. Looking ahead, I want to say that in the future the service has also developed very actively, and its users have seen many new interesting features more than once. In particular, users received an unlimited mailbox size and a new spam filter "Spam Defense". In 2003, the Yandex design was renewed again.
By the way, each design corresponded to a specific version. The 2003 version of the design was the eighth in a row, and it looked like this
Any rollout of a new design version initially goes through a beta testing period. And if before that beta tests were carried out in a closed mode, then this time, in two weeks of trial testing of the new interface, anyone could get access to the new interface. True, a year later the main one was upgraded again, but more successfully. And it existed in this form until 2007.
Yandex even at that time was already a fairly reputable company, because already in 2003 the Yandex search engine was successfully introduced into the presidential website. In the fall of 2003, the developers rolled out the next product updates: Yandex.Publisher (Yandex.Publisher), Yandex.Server (Yandex.Server), which became the legacy of Yandex.Site.
2004 year
The business model occupied by the number one search engine in the Russian Internet worked very well, as a result of which the profit received by the company in 2004 was already tens of millions of dollars. This gave impetus to the development of new services, for example, a map search service, blogs, forums. The year 2004 is also notable for the fact that it was then that a serious competitor in the person of Google appeared on the Russian market. There was an urgent need to join the struggle for leadership, as a result of which the management of Yandex decided to increase the number of employees tenfold. Initially, there were 200, after the renewal of the staff, there were 2,000 employees. But the main thing is that after the personnel renewal, nothing has changed for the worse. The traditions remained, the technologies were also up to par. In general, we can say that Yasha has not turned into a dry corporation.
The battle of technology: Yandex vs Google
2005 year
This year passed under the slogan of the geographical expansion of the company's representative office. Because a Ukrainian representative office of Yandex appeared - Yandex.Ukraine. By the way, the director of this representative office is Sergey Petrenko, the founder of the well-known serch and the author of the interesting blog BloGnot
2005 became significant also because my beloved was opened. This is a service based on the principle of "kolotibablo webmaster", and if in Russian, it is a service that allows webmasters to place advertisements on their sites.
Yandex.Dictionaries appeared in the same year. Changes have also taken place in the Yandex.Money service. Now all users have the opportunity to manage their account through the Internet wallet.
2006 year
This year will be remembered for the appearance of the now well-known service blogs.yandex.ru. This is a kind of marketing tool. Allowed to study public opinion, reviews in blogs, forums. Yandex.Maps has introduced a traffic display tool.
From 2006 to 2010 Yandex was located in the old office on Samokatnaya street in Moscow
As you can see, they were a bit cramped earlier. It's not now, a huge building with 2,000 employees.
In 2006, there was another interesting event - the first remote development office was opened in St. Petersburg. Then, of course, the scale was not yet the same. It's not like there are 11 offices in Yandex today in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and even California. Offices differ in their types of activities. There are development offices, sales offices, offices that work in the direction of product localization
2007 year
This year there have been more webmaster-oriented events. In particular, the Yandex.Photo service has appeared. But for me, as a webmaster, a more interesting event is the emergence of the service Yandex.Metrica... True, then it was a completely crude service, and it was focused not on webmasters, but on Yandex.Direct advertisers. In the same year, a Ukrainian representative office was opened - Yandex.ua. Today, according to LiveInternet data, almost 14% of Russian-language traffic falls on yandex.ua
Also in 2007, he started a project known to all webmasters, which is not used now, probably only lazy
2008 year
We can say that this year Yandex's sphere of influence has increased so much that it was decided to open a branch of the search engine in the USA, California. At the same time, significant additions were made to the algorithms. In particular, the international standards Sitemap, MediaRSS, etc. began to be supported. That is, as you can see, the spheres of interest have gone far beyond the limits of the Russian Internet. The number one search engine of the Russian Internet has now become English-language sites. Before that, the problem was that the domestic search engine did not support international standards, and therefore there was a problem with the indexing of sites from the bourgeoisie, but after the 2008 upgrade, this problem was solved. And after that, the Yandex logo began to be written entirely in Russian.
year 2009
This year was significant because before that there was no division of search by region. That is, before the introduction of this algorithm, it was built on the principles of uniformity. You enter, for example, in the search line the query "" in Moscow and Novosibirsk, and you get the same results. Now everything has changed. And the search results are mixed with results based on the principle of geo-dependence. Simply put - if you search with Yandex in Moscow and Novosibirsk, the results will be different.
In 2009, work continued in the previously selected western direction. In particular, a service was tested with the help of which foreign sites were translated. Then this service evolved, and in 2011 it became known as Yandex.Translation.
An equally important event was the introduction of a new method of machine learning - Matrixnet... This technology applies various patterns as an assessment, and takes into account various ranking factors. But the main thing is that the technology is self-learning. When assessing assessors, only real patterns are assessed, finding nonexistent ones is completely excluded.
The revolutionary nature of this technology lies in the fact that Matrixnet uses an incredibly complex ranking formula that takes into account a huge number of factors. This, on the one hand, allows you to achieve better search results, and on the other hand, it will not allow webmasters to understand this pattern, and, therefore, to influence it in their own interests.
MatrixNet technology in detail:
2010 year
The old office on Samokatnaya street is a thing of the past, and the whole company has moved to new mansions. Actually, it became the main event of 2010
The start page is the pages that are automatically opened when the browser starts. The main page is the page that opens when you click on the button located directly in front of the address bar.
How to change the start page in Yandex browser
When you start the Yandex browser, the main start page opens in the form of a Scoreboard, which displays the most visited pages or immediately opens all the tabs that were opened when the browser was last closed. It is possible in the Yandex browser settings to make the start automatically Scoreboard or unclosed tabs. To do this, click on the three parallel stripes located in the upper right part of the browser.
In the Yandex browser, the start page can be installed automatically through the settings
A context menu will open in which you select the Settings item. The browser will open a window called Settings. In this window you need to find a paragraph Open at startup.
This paragraph has two clauses and one subclause.
How to put Yandex as a start page If you put a full stop at the point Scoreboard with your favorite sites then the next time you launch the Yandex browser, the start page will open in the form of a scoreboard in which the most frequently viewed pages will be displayed.
How to return the Yandex start page If you check the box next to Previously opened tabs then the next start will open the start page of the Yandex browser in the form of all tabs that were not closed when the browser was closed.
How to make Yandex your start page automatically If you check the box next to Open yandex.ru if there are no tabs then the next time you start the browser, all tabs that were not closed when the browser was shut down will also open. But if all tabs are closed before closing the browser, then the next time you launch the browser, the Yandex main page at yandex.ru will open. Thus, in the browser, you can install Yandex as the start page.
You can make the page you need as the start page in the Yandex browser or several pages that will open the next time you start the browser. Setting up the start page of Yandex browser begins with the fact that in the settings in the paragraph When starting to open, put a full stop at the item Scoreboard with your favorite sites. After that, in the browser, open several tabs with pages that will have to open each time you start the browser.
How to install Yandex home page All of these tabs must be pinned in turn. To do this, on the tab bar, move the cursor over the tab and by pressing the right mouse button select the Pin Tab item from the context menu. All pinned tabs will appear on the left side of the tab bar in the form of small favicons. After that, the next time you launch the browser, only your pinned tabs will open.
How to open the Yandex home page
To be able to open the page in the Yandex home browser, the button must be displayed in front of the address bar. If the button is not displayed, then you will need to open the browser settings and find the paragraph Appearance settings in them.
Instructions
Numerous Yandex services make the life of the system's users much easier by providing them with a variety of useful information and applications. Among them are a TV program, a poster, a vehicle schedule, a map, Yandex.Traffic jams and much more. With Yandex services, you will always be aware of the status, you will be able to track your e-mail, order, visit online stores, translate texts, search and save, save the necessary information on the virtual Yandex. Disk "... And that's not all of Yandex's features. Try Yandex's features and add-ons, and if you like them, make this search engine your own. This step will allow your browser, upon launching it, to immediately open Yandex services, one of which is the search engine.
So, you can enter Yandex in several ways. For example, you can enter a query containing the keyword "Yandex" in any search engine. Typically, the next page will open a list of available sites containing this keyword. You will need the line "Yandex - search engine and Internet portal". She is usually the first on the list. Click on this link and go to the Yandex home page. This way of going to Yandex is available, but inconvenient. As well as constant input into the search or address bar yandex.ru. Therefore, if you prefer Yandex among the various search engines, it is best to set it as your home page.
To do this, open the "main page" of the service by clicking on the link yandex.ru. Find in the upper left corner of the new page the underlined inscription “Install Yandex as homepage”. Click the link and launch the browser: now it will immediately open with Yandex.
In some browsers, the inscription "Install Yandex as home page" may be missing. To do this, you just need to slightly change your browser settings. Take a close look at the work panel, find the "Settings" option. Depending on the browser model, it can be located in different places, but most often in the "Tools" tab. Open the bookmark, find the "Home" section and enter the address of the home page you need in the field. In particular - http://www.yandex.ru/, Fix the result by clicking the "OK" button and, if required, restart the browser.
In addition, Yandex services have a special section explaining to users that Yandex is the home (or start) page that will open when the browser is launched. You can find these by going to https://yandex.ru/support/common/yandex-settings/homepage.html. Copy the link and go to the page you need and read the recommendations on it.
Here are just a few tips. One of the simplest ones recommends that you first go to home.yandex.ru, find the "Install" button and download an extension that allows you to install the service as your home page. After installing the extension, a new window will open, which will indicate that to pin the start page, you will need to click the "Me" icon on the work panel. Click it and activate the Startup application. Yandex ".
However, this method, although simple, does not always work. This is due to the fact that some browsers do not support Yandex. As a rule, these are browsers with built-in Mile search. It is impossible to install Yandex. In this case, you can only perform a few transitions to open the Yandex search engine.
If you are using Internet Explorer, on the toolbar, click the icon depicting. Then go to the "Browser Properties" section, and from it to the "General" subsection. In the text box, enter the address https://www.yandex.ru/. Then press the "Apply" and "OK" buttons to consolidate the result.
If you prefer Microsoft Edge, click the ellipsis icon and go to the Options section. At the bottom of the page, find and click the View Advanced Options button. When the next window opens, enable the option "Show home page button". Then enter the address https://www.yandex.ru/ in the text field and click the "Save" button.
If you prefer the Mozilla Firefox browser, on the top toolbar, find the icon with three horizontal stripes, open "Settings" and select the "General" section. In the When Firefox starts up box, check Show home page. Then, in the "Home page" field, enter the "Yandex" address - https://www.yandex.ru/.
If you are using the Opera browser, press the Alt + P keyboard shortcut. Then go to the Browser tab, and then to the On Startup section. Click the Set Pages link button. Then, in the “Add a new page” field, enter the address https://www.yandex.ru/ and click OK. Then set the switch to the "Open Start Page" position.
Yandex is a modern way to search for information, news and other data that users need on a daily basis. Here you can also create a free mailbox, get acquainted with the schedule and exchange rates. A unified source of any information, a real guide to the World Wide Web is the domestic service Yandex.
Where to begin
You can get to the Yandex home page by entering https://yandex.ru/ in the address bar of your browser. After that, the user will be on the main page of the Yandex ru service.
Top center the latest news is located, to the right you can enter your e-mail box and check your mail. Slightly below, to the left of the logo, there is a search bar, under which there is basic information about traffic jams, weather and a map of the city in which the user is located.
Setting as start page
As soon as you start the browser, the first page it opens is called the start page. When you visit Yandex, the site offers to make the service a start page. If you click " I accept", Then with each subsequent launch of the browser, your work will start from the main page.
Yandex search
Getting the information you need from Yandex is as easy as shelling pears. Start typing your request, and the search engine will automatically suggest possible options. 
Above the search bar, there are services that simplify this process. Need pictures? Click on the corresponding link. Video? Not a problem, Yandex is ready to search for the video you need. There are other services available in the "More" tab to simplify the search.
This is an advanced search. 
Here can be specified specific region, select a search by the site of interest, or filter sites by publication date. Please note: in the lower right corner, Yandex offers to install the start page and the main search engine. Click "OK" and the system will do the rest automatically.
Location
Yandex determines your location automatically in order to display relevant news and data, such as weather and traffic jams, for the region in which the user is located. Do you want to change the region? No problem. Click on the default city. 
After that, you will be taken to the page location selection... Click "Find me" to let the service update your location information automatically, or enter the name of the settlement in the line below. 
Yandex News
The latest developments in the region and the world are located in the very top of the window where you can switch between news. By clicking on the event of interest, the user will be redirected to the Yandex News service page. 
Here you can read in detail with the latest events in the country and the world, sort the news into categories, and get acquainted with the events of interest to the user.
additional services
Above the search bar are additional services that make it easier to work with information:
- Video: Find a video you are interested in, or check out the latest updates.
- Images: Search the images and photos you want with ease, or just look at trending images.
- news: the service already described above, allows you to always be aware of events.
- Cards: helps you easily navigate the terrain, and find the desired locations right on the map.
- Market: look at the products on sale and order the one you want in one click.
- Translator: translation of texts with support for a large number of languages.
- Music: create your own collection of audio recordings, or listen to your favorite songs online.
Anything that does not fit above the search bar can be found in the “ More". The available options include job search projects, a poster, and many other resources.
Additional links
Information about the service is located at the bottom of the title page, and contains the following items:
Installing the theme
To make the design more colorful and interesting, the developers suggest installing on it one of the many themes that change the appearance of the site. This is as easy as shelling pears to do. In the upper right corner there is a menu “ Customization", In which you need to select the item" Put the topic», After which a list of available themes will open. Installation is free and completed in a matter of seconds. 
For example, the Star Wars theme. 15 seconds - and from the start page the most formidable Jedi of the galaxy is looking at you. 
What else can be configured
In the same menu “ Settings"There are several other points:
- Location: as mentioned earlier, here you can set the settlement in which the user is located.
- My places: Add places like home and work to the map.
- Language: Choose in which language the site will be displayed.
- Search settings: Several options to simplify and personalize your search.
- Advertising: make it more interesting for yourself, or remove it altogether.
- Notifications: what do you want Yandex to tell you about?
- The passport: Additional security settings and the entry of personal information such as a phone number.
Yandex Passport
To obtain a passport in Yandex, you must enter your first and last name, login and password, and also indicate your mobile phone number. Registration takes no more than two minutes, after which many options become available to the user, including linking a bank card, changing the password and security settings, and many other functions.
How to ask support questions
In order to learn about the work of services and services, visit the section " Feedback». 
Here you can familiarize yourself with the basic instructions for working with the portal, find out the necessary information, and, if necessary, contact the support service for clarifications.
