Site indexing
Question about displaying my site in search results
Check if the pages are shown in search. To do this, enter the URL of the page you want to check in the Yandex search bar:
This means that the page is already indexed, that is, loaded to the robot's database. If you don't find a page by a specific query or it's ranking low, try finding out on your own the reason for the change in the site's ranking.
Or clarify the question:
Check out the reasons for changes in ranking, and check the site for security and violations. If Yandex Webmaster finds a threat or violation, follow the recommendations provided in the service.
There are no violations or threats on the site
Changes in the site's search ranking are acceptable in most cases. It may be due to constant adjustments of algorithms, the dynamics of search results, or fluctuations in site popularity.
Make sure that the queries for which your site held leading positions had sufficient impressions over time. To do this, compare the statistics on your search queries in Yandex Webmaster with the Wordstat query history.
When analyzing site rankings, keep in mind that search results are personalized. For example, for frequent site visitors a search query may appear at the top of the ranking, while for other search users your site may occupy other positions.
The site was a leader for a long time
Contact the support service if the ranking change is accompanied by all listed conditions:
- the site was a leader for a long time, taking into account the dynamism and personalization of search results;
- site ranking changed by more than a few dozen points (for smaller changes, check that your site meets the recommendations under How to improve site ranking in search results);
- Site traffic decreased.
Fill out the form
If your site doesn't have high ranking for some queries, it may be that it didn't gain sufficient relevance yet. Check the site metrics described in this section.
The reasons for the site's low position remain unclear
Use the url operator (example) to check if a page is included in search.
- The page may be a duplicate. For information about how to check and fix this, see Duplicate pages. Also, the page may not be included in the search or disappear from it for other reasons.
- If the site changed its URL but the page is displayed in the search at the old URL, make sure you moved the site correctly.
A special algorithm determines if the page will be displayed in the search results or not. For example, for the page to be displayed, its content must match the search query. To learn more, see Stage 4. Generating search results.
The page in the search doesn't fully match the query
If you don't find new site pages in the search, go to the How do I add a site to search? section. If the pages were previously in the search, but are missing now, check out the reasons for excluding pages.
If you notice a decrease in website traffic, check it for any detected violations or security issues.
There are no violations or threats on the site
Traffic changes may be related to changes in demand. Check the dynamics of site visitors’ interests using the word selection history or the “Demand” metric in search query monitoring.
I checked. Demand hasn’t changed, but traffic has dropped
Traffic from search results may decrease due to changes in the site’s ranking.
Site positions for queries are constantly changing. Possible reasons for this are:
- changes in ranking (formulas and classifiers are retrained, factors emerge and are updated), quality metrics (new aspects, changes in instructions), anti-spam and anti-fraud algorithms;
- changes in user preferences (demand has fallen or shifted to other products or services, user expectations, navigation patterns, choices, etc. have changed);
- changes in the competitive environment (new sellers, services, new types of content and sites have appeared, content, pricing, service, etc. have changed);
- changes on the sites: pages may have entered or dropped out of search; titles, meta tags, page content may have changed; other sites may have become more user-friendly, gained more audience trust.
I checked. The change in traffic is significant and affects a large portion of the site
If another resource only contains the content that is identical to yours, this is not enough to exclude the site from the search results.
To protect your copyright, you can file a complaint directly with the administrator of the site whose content you believe to be identical to yours, or use other legal means to protect your rights.
If you can't come to an agreement with the site administration, try writing to the hosting provider of the site.
Recommendations didn't help
This means that the site or some of the pages haven't been indexed by the Yandex robot yet. To learn more about how the robot crawls sites, see How does the Yandex search work?.
Clarify your question:
The site may also be unavailable due to a server error. You can check the site availability with the Server response check tool.
If the site URL changed, the robot might not have enough time to track it. Check if the site addresses are configured correctly.
The site is available for the robot, but doesn't appear in the search
Send pages to be visited by the robot using the Reindex pages tool. The pages will appear in the search within two weeks.
Recommendations didn't help
Check out recommendations that help you add pages in the search.
The pages are accessible to the robot and sent for reindexing, but do not appear in the search for more than three weeks
For more information about why pages may disappear from search and recommendations on how to fix this, see the Why are pages excluded from the search? section.
If the problem wasn't solved, specify the reason:
Pages with different content can be considered duplicates if they responded to the robot with an error message (for example, in case of a stub page on the site). Check how the pages respond now. If pages return different content, send them for re-indexing — this way they can get back in the search results faster.
To prevent pages from being excluded from the search if the site is temporarily unavailable, configure the 503 HTTP response code.
Excluding pages from the search results is not an error on the part of a site or the indexing robot: it excludes pages that users won't be able to find using search queries. Therefore, their exclusion shouldn't affect the visibility of indexed pages on the site. To learn more, see Low-value or low-demand pages.
Contact support if:
- Pages were ranked high in the search results before they were excluded.
- The site's position after the exclusion of pages decreased dramatically.
- The number of click-throughs from the search engine reduced significantly after the pages were excluded.
Fill out the form
The site or individual pages won't get updated in the search
To speed up how quickly changes in site pages appear in the search results, see How do I reindex a site?
If you still have questions or have any difficulties, specify the topic:
Make sure that:
- The pages are accessible to the bot by using the Server response check tool.
- The information about pages is present in the Sitemap file.
- The Disallow and noindex prohibiting directives and the noindex HTML element in the robots.txt file prevent only technical and duplicate pages from indexing.
Recommendations didn't help
If you followed the instructions when deleting the site pages and more than two weeks passed after the site was crawled by the Yandex robot, fill out the form below:
If you use a redirect, the robot will gradually track redirects and the old pages will disappear from the search results as it crawls the site. To have the bot learn about the changes faster, send the pages for reindexing.
If the page URLs change with the change of the site's domain name, it may take more than a month to update the search data. Check if the site addresses are configured correctly.
The pages are sent for reindexing, but aren't removed from the search for more than two weeks
How do I delete a site or individual pages from search
See recommendations in the How do I exclude pages from the search? section.
Tell us what your question is about so we can direct you to the right specialist:
If you followed the instructions when deleting the site pages and more than two weeks passed after the site was crawled by the Yandex robot, fill out the form below:
If you used a redirect, submit pages for reindexing.
The pages are sent for reindexing, but aren't removed from the search for more than two weeks
Images are poorly indexed
To ask a question, write to technical support of Yandex Images.
Videos are poorly indexed
To ask a question, contact technical supportof Yandex Video Search.
Question about the robots.txt file
Question about the Sitemap file
For information about the file format and requirements, see Using the Sitemap file.
The robot creates an excessive load on the site or server
See recommendations for reducing the load on the site.
You can also go to
A site page that duplicates the content of another page on the same site but has a different URL.