How do I get indexed on Yandex?

Posted by By Dan Taylor 2 Min Read

To get your website indexed on Yandex, follow these steps:

  1. Create a Yandex Webmaster Account:
    • Go to the Yandex Webmaster page.
    • Sign in with your Yandex account or create a new one if you don’t have one.
  2. Add Your Site:
    • Click on the “Add Site” button.
    • Enter the URL of your website.
    • Click “Add.”
  3. Verify Ownership:
    • Yandex will ask you to verify ownership of your site. There are several methods to do this:
      • HTML File: Upload a Yandex-provided HTML file to the root directory of your website.
      • Meta Tag: Add a Yandex-provided meta tag to the <head> section of your website’s homepage.
      • DNS Record: Add a DNS record to your domain’s DNS settings.
    • Once you’ve done one of these methods, click “Check” in Yandex Webmaster to complete the verification.
  4. Submit Your Sitemap:
    • A sitemap helps Yandex understand the structure of your site and index your pages more efficiently.
    • Create a sitemap if you don’t have one. You can use tools like XML-Sitemaps.com or plugins if you’re using CMS platforms like WordPress.
    • In Yandex Webmaster, go to the “Indexing” section and select “Sitemap files.”
    • Enter the URL of your sitemap and click “Add.”
  5. Monitor Your Site:
    • Use Yandex Webmaster tools to monitor the indexing status of your site, view crawl errors, and get insights into how your site is performing on Yandex.
    • Regularly check for any issues and fix them promptly to ensure your site is indexed and performing well.
  6. Optimize Your Site for Yandex:
    • Ensure your website follows good SEO practices, such as having unique and high-quality content, proper use of headers, and a clean URL structure.
    • Make sure your site is mobile-friendly, as mobile usability is important for Yandex.
    • Improve site speed and performance.

Following these steps will help get your site indexed on Yandex and ensure it performs well in Yandex search results.

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