Yandex Appoints Mikhail Slivinsky as Ambassador for Online Platforms in Search

Posted by By Dan Taylor 2 Min Read

Yandex has taken a significant step towards strengthening its relationship with webmasters and content creators by appointing Mikhail Slivinsky as the ambassador for internet sites within Yandex Search. This move, announced at the 12th annual Yandex Webmaster conference—a key event for marketers, webmasters, website owners, and analysts—aims to enhance communication between Yandex and the vast ecosystem of online platforms.

Mikhail Slivinsky, a seasoned professional in search engine optimization since 2008, has been at the helm of the Webmaster service since 2017.

Under his leadership, the service has played a crucial role in assisting web resources and online stores in monitoring their sites’ technical condition and optimizing their presence in Yandex search results.

As the newly appointed ambassador, Slivinsky’s role will encompass a broad spectrum of responsibilities aimed at fostering a deeper collaboration between Yandex and the online community. He will serve as a liaison, engaging directly with site representatives to gather insights on their needs and concerns.

This direct line of communication will enable Slivinsky to relay feedback to Yandex developers, ensuring that the needs of content creators are considered in the ongoing development of search technologies and features.

Furthermore, Slivinsky is set to be a regular fixture at Yandex’s proprietary events and external conferences that delve into search optimization and digital marketing. His role also includes conducting personal meetings with website owners and SEO specialists, providing them with an opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities directly related to improving their visibility and performance on Yandex Search.

For those looking to engage with Mikhail Slivinsky and discuss matters pertaining to Yandex Search, he is accessible via Telegram at @yasearch_amb. This initiative marks a pivotal effort by Yandex to bridge the gap between its technological advancements and the practical needs of the online community, promising a more inclusive and responsive approach to search engine development and optimization.

Dan Taylor
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Dan Taylor is the founder and editor of International Search Insights (ISI), the publication behind ReadIsi, and a Partner and Head of Innovation (Search & AI) at SALT.agency. He has worked in search for more than a decade, in-house and agency-side, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading voices on search engines beyond Google, including Yandex, Baidu, Naver and Cốc Cốc. On ReadIsi, Dan covers the engines and AI answer platforms that English-language coverage tends to miss: Baidu and ERNIE, Yandex and Alice AI, Naver, Cốc Cốc, Shenma, Sogou, WeChat and Weibo search, plus DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. He also keeps dated records of documented changes, such as the Yandex, Baidu and Naver algorithm update histories and the DeepSeek, ERNIE and Qwen model update histories. His approach is to take learnings from global search engines and apply logic with a high evidence threshold. A claim needs a source, patterns seen in one market are treated as a hypothesis until they are checked in another, and where the evidence is thin he says so. For brands, that means advice built on what can be shown, with measurement that separates being cited from being chosen. Dan is credited with coining the term “edge SEO” and won the inaugural TechSEO Boost research competition in 2018 for his work on CDN and edge changes for SEO. In 2026 he was credited with coining “Infinite Tail” to describe how keyword research is changing with AI search. He is the author of AI Search Marketing For The Travel Sector, writes for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Travel Marketing Guy, and has advised technology, SaaS, travel and enterprise ecommerce brands, including Cloudflare, GitLab and Airbnb. He has given multiple talks and panels at the International Search Summit in Barcelona, and has also spoken at Optimization Moscow, brightonSEO, Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia in Bangkok, Athens SEO and the Asia SEO Virtual Summit 2026, where his talk looked at how Baidu, Naver, DeepSeek, Tencent, Cốc Cốc and Yandex built their own AI answers.
Founder & Editor