Getting your website ready

Attention. The widget only parses content from websites that are displayed in Yandex search and connected to YAN as a content site or its mirror. For example, content taken from a website blocked by Yandex search cannot be displayed in the widget.

The widget is updated with new content within two hours after it's been created. However, this might take longer if you register a brand new YAN domain before creating your widget.

The search robot analyzes page markup before picking the elements to upload into the widget. You can add special metatags to the page to speed up the analysis. The robot also quickly processes OpenGraph and Schema.org structured data tags according to the priority levels described below. If there are no special tags on the page, the robot will try to get information from other page elements. However, the results may not be accurate. To make processing faster and make the relevant elements show up in the widget, we recommend marking up site pages with the YAN metatags.

  1. Tag priority order
  2. How YAN metatags can help
  3. The YAN metatags list
  4. Adding YAN metatags

Why doesn't the widget show up on the page?

Tag priority order

The robot selects page elements based on priority. First, the robot picks elements with the highest priority level. If no such elements are found, the robot picks elements with the second-highest priority level and so on.

Header

Element priority:

  1. The yandex_recommendations_title metatag used in the YAN recommendation widget. For example:
    <meta property="yandex_recommendations_title"
                    content="World's best football players"/>
  2. The og:title metatag. For example:
    <meta property="og:title" content="World's best football players in 2019"/>
  3. Other available elements, such as <title>.
Image

Element priority:

  1. The yandex_recommendations_image metatag used in the YAN recommendation widget. For example:
    <meta property="yandex_recommendations_image"
                    content="https://example.com/image.jpg"/>
  2. The og:image metatag. For example:
    <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg"/>
  3. Other available elements, such as <image>.
Date of publication

Element priority:

  1. The og:type metatag with the article:published_time object. For example:
    <meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2020-11-26T12:56:36+0300"/>
  2. A metatag with the itemprop attribute and datePublished data type. For example:
    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2020-11-26T12:56:36+0300"/>
  3. Other available elements.

How YAN metatags can help

Note. You don't have to use YAN recommendation widget metatags. If none are specified, the widget is created based on data automatically picked up by the robot. However, we still recommend you always use the yandex_recommendations_image or og:image tags. Without them, images take longer to process, which is why content containing such images may not make it into the widget in time, or not at all in the case of age-restricted content.

YAN recommendation widget metatags let you:

  • Change recommendation titles. By default, the titles in widget cells are determined automatically by the robot based on page analysis. However, you can set a title manually (for example, by making the title of a publication shorter).
  • Change the image used for a recommendation. By default, the images in widget cells are determined automatically by the robot based on page analysis. If you want to be sure the robot picks the correct image, add the yandex_recommendations_image or og:image tag to your image.
  • Add a content category to a widget cell. This will make it easier for users to find the right recommendation. Keep in mind that you need to add metatags if you want content categories displayed in the widget.
  • Filter content displayed in the widget using special tags.

Recommendation widgets are updated after each robot crawl. The robot takes little time to add new pages, but adding edited pages, including pages with changes in markup, takes more time. To process a page more quickly, reindex it in Yandex.Webmaster.

The YAN metatags list

Metatag Description
yandex_recommendations_title

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_title"
                    content="World's best football players"/>
 Lets you set a title exclusively for display in the widget (for example, by making the page title shorter).

yandex_recommendations_category

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_category" content="Sports"/>

Lets you allocate categories to your content, such as \"science\", \"sports\", or \"adult\". The maximum length of a category name is 128 characters. You can't use commas or the symbols \n, \0, or \t.

If your document's metatags include some content category, the category will be displayed in the widget cell specified in the design template. If metatags include multiple categories, they will be all displayed in the widget in a single line separated by commas.

You should use tags instead of categories for filtering content.
yandex_recommendations_tag

Examples

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_tag" content="first_tag"/>
<meta property="yandex_recommendations_tag" content="second_tag"/>
 Lets you filter content. You can use this for:
  • Choosing content to upload into the widget based on tags.
  • Choosing content to exclude from the widget based on tags.

You have to come up with a tag name yourself. You can use Latin characters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. The maximum name length for metatags is 128 characters. You can add up to 64 metatags.
yandex_recommendations_image

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_image"
                    content="https://example.com/image.jpg"/>
 Lets you choose an image to display in the widget.
yandex_recommendations_kill

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_kill" content="1"/>
 Used for excluding pages from the widget. If you can't manually specify a path to sections you wish to exclude, you can use this metatag instead.
Metatag Description
yandex_recommendations_title

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_title"
                    content="World's best football players"/>
 Lets you set a title exclusively for display in the widget (for example, by making the page title shorter).

yandex_recommendations_category

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_category" content="Sports"/>

Lets you allocate categories to your content, such as \"science\", \"sports\", or \"adult\". The maximum length of a category name is 128 characters. You can't use commas or the symbols \n, \0, or \t.

If your document's metatags include some content category, the category will be displayed in the widget cell specified in the design template. If metatags include multiple categories, they will be all displayed in the widget in a single line separated by commas.

You should use tags instead of categories for filtering content.
yandex_recommendations_tag

Examples

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_tag" content="first_tag"/>
<meta property="yandex_recommendations_tag" content="second_tag"/>
 Lets you filter content. You can use this for:
  • Choosing content to upload into the widget based on tags.
  • Choosing content to exclude from the widget based on tags.

You have to come up with a tag name yourself. You can use Latin characters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. The maximum name length for metatags is 128 characters. You can add up to 64 metatags.
yandex_recommendations_image

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_image"
                    content="https://example.com/image.jpg"/>
 Lets you choose an image to display in the widget.
yandex_recommendations_kill

Example

<meta property="yandex_recommendations_kill" content="1"/>
 Used for excluding pages from the widget. If you can't manually specify a path to sections you wish to exclude, you can use this metatag instead.

Adding YAN metatags

Add metatags to the page's <head> section.

For example:

          <head>
          ...
          <meta property="yandex_recommendations_title" content="Regional sports news"/>
          <meta property="yandex_recommendations_category" content="Sports"/>
          <meta property="yandex_recommendations_image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg"/>          
          <meta property="yandex_recommendations_tag" content="tag_1"/>
          ...
          </head>