Russian search engine Yandex is now allowing users to limit search to only foreign websites (non Russian sites). Now users can click on the global search filter (as shown in this screenshot) to see results from foreign sources. The global search is also available at the company’s experimental Yandex.com portal launched for testing new search algorithms.
Yandex has been indexing foreign websites and adding global content to its search results for the past two years and caters towards Russian users, obviously. But the feature will allow a users to filter results more accurately if they want an answer from a website outside of Russia.
So, the search query TechCrunch on yandex.ru returns a long list of websites in Russian; but with the global search filter enabled, the results lead to English sites. Currently, Yandex indexes more than 4 billion pages in Latin languages, with the majority of these pages being in English. Yandex’s search results page now has the option to view either local or foreign search results separately. By default, Yandex search prioritizes local websites as before.
Yandex says that user queries in one of the Latin-alphabet based languages total 12-15% of all searches on the search engine. Yandex also plans to expand its search index to deliver multimedia results and other useful answers.
Yandex, which launched in 1997, has been able to outrun Google in Russia. Yandex has an estimated domestic market share of 63.6% according to LiveInternet.ru, with Google trailing at 21.8% in April.
