Yandex Webmaster: connecting a site and the reports that matter for SEO

What Yandex Webmaster is and why you need it

Webmaster gathers in one place everything Yandex knows about your site: which pages the crawler has fetched and which of them are in search, what errors it found, and which queries show your site to users. The same place has tools for managing how the site is crawled and how it looks in search results: Sitemap files, page recrawl requests, region settings, sitelinks.

Google’s equivalent service is called Search Console, which is why Webmaster is sometimes called “Yandex Search Console.”

How Webmaster differs from Yandex Metrica

Service	What it shows	Where the data comes from	Typical question
Webmaster	How the Yandex crawler sees the site and how it’s represented in search	Yandex’s search data about your site: crawling, pages in search, queries	“Why isn’t this page in search?”, “Which queries do we show up for?”
Metrica	What visitors do on the site	A tracking code on the pages sends data about the page and the visitor’s actions	“Where did visitors come from, and what did they do?”

The services don’t replace each other. Put simply: Webmaster covers the path up to the click in search results, Metrica covers what happens after the visit to the site.

How to add a site to Yandex Webmaster

1. Sign in to Webmaster with a Yandex ID — your Yandex account — or register one.
2. Click “Add site.”
3. Enter the site’s address and click “Add.”
4. Verify your rights: choose a method on the “Access rights” page. The methods are covered below.

Adding a site to Webmaster isn’t the same as getting it into the index. The service gives you access to data about the site, while how a search engine finds and adds pages to the index is covered in a separate article.

Which address to enter: protocol, www and subdomains

Enter the address together with its protocol — HTTP or HTTPS — with or without the www prefix, for example https://www.example.ru. Add the version that’s the main one for your site: the one it opens at without a redirect, and the one you use in links and in Sitemap.

For Yandex, addresses with and without www, and with HTTP and HTTPS, count as different sites. If both the www and non-www versions are in search, Yandex may pick the main address automatically, and only that one will stay in search. Changing the address — the domain, the protocol or the www prefix — is called a site move, and Webmaster has a tool for it: “Indexing → Site move.”

Yandex treats a subdomain as a separate site: it’s added to Webmaster separately, and rights to it are verified separately. If rights to the main domain are already verified, a subdomain can use simplified verification — the code generated for the main domain.

How to verify your rights to a site

Rights verification is a way to prove you control the site: you place a code issued by Webmaster on the site or in the domain’s settings, and the service finds it. Yandex explains this requirement by the fact that data about page indexing can contain confidential information. Without verification, only some tools are available, and with limited functionality.

Verification methods

Method	What to do	When it’s convenient
HTML file in the root directory — the documentation calls this the recommended method	Upload the file issued by Webmaster to the site’s root	You have access to the site’s files on the server
Meta tag on the home page	Add the yandex-verification meta tag to the <head> of the home page	You have access to the page template
TXT record in DNS	Add a TXT record with the code to the domain’s DNS settings	You have access to domain management; the site’s files and templates are rebuilt often
YTM / GTM tag manager	Place the code through a tag manager	A tag manager is already running on the site
Through the domain registrar — marked as beta in the documentation	Follow the instructions in Webmaster’s documentation	The domain is registered with a registrar that supports this method
In a website builder or CMS	Follow the platform’s instructions	The site is built on a website builder, with no access to files

Here’s what the verification meta tag looks like; the ellipsis stands for your code from Webmaster:

<meta name="yandex-verification" content="…" />

Why verification can be lost

Verification isn’t a one-time thing. Yandex periodically checks that the verification code is still in place; if a check doesn’t find it, the site moves into the unverified category. Every user you’ve delegated rights to loses access: on their “My sites” page, the site will show the status “Site rights not verified.”

The code can disappear unnoticed: the file wasn’t carried over during a hosting migration, the meta tag vanished along with an old template, the TXT record was deleted when DNS servers changed. So don’t remove the file, meta tag or record after verification, and add a check for them to your release and migration checklist.

Access rights: giving colleagues and a contractor access

Delegating rights

The owner of verified rights can grant access to other Webmaster users — this is called delegation. The list of users is in the “Settings → Access rights” section: enter the user’s login, choose a role and click “Add.”

The documentation lists these roles:

• “Owner” — full access to the site’s information and management of rights;
• “Editing” — viewing and editing, but without the right to assign or revoke rights;
• “Viewing” — all information about the site without the ability to edit it;
• “Partial access” — only specific tools and features.

Give colleagues and a contractor a role suited to the task, rather than sharing the login and password of a Yandex account. This way you can see who has access and revoke it without changing the password or affecting other services.

How to keep access tidy

To change a role, click it next to the user; to remove access, click “Revoke role.” Review the list of users whenever a contractor or employee changes, and revoke roles that are no longer needed.

Delegated users’ access depends on the owner’s verification: if the verification data is removed from the site, all of them lose access. If you want to be notified about new access grants, the notification settings have a topic called “Delegating rights to manage the site.”

What to set up right after connecting

1. Add a Sitemap file. The “Indexing → Sitemap files” section: enter the file’s address and click “Add.” Before that, it’s worth understanding how to prepare a Sitemap file for submission.
2. Check robots.txt. The “Tools → robots.txt analysis” tool finds syntax errors and contradictions in the file and shows which pages are allowed or disallowed for indexing. More on how robots.txt rules work and how to check them in Webmaster.
3. Set the region, if the site targets a specific region. The “Search appearance → Regional settings” section. The region is factored into results for location-dependent queries, and doesn’t exclude the site from search in other regions.
4. Check the site move, if the site’s address changed. Changing the domain, protocol or www prefix is a reason to open “Indexing → Site move” and check the situation against Yandex’s documentation on site moves.
5. Turn on notifications. On the “Notifications” page, click “Configure” and choose topics, for example “Site errors” and “Recommendations.” Notifications arrive in the service itself, by email, in Telegram, or as push messages.
6. Give colleagues access. Through rights delegation, as described in the section above.

Reports and tools that matter for SEO

For each report below: what it shows, when to open it, and what to do with the result.

“Pages in search” and excluded pages

What it shows. The “Indexing → Pages in search” report helps track how the number of the site’s pages in search changes, and how many pages were added and excluded. The tabs are “Recent changes,” “All pages” and “Excluded pages”; an excluded page has a status, which is the reason for exclusion.

When to check. After releases, a site move and bulk edits, and at the start of each reporting period.

What to do. Look among the excluded pages for ones that should be in search. According to Yandex’s documentation, the mere presence and number of excluded pages shouldn’t affect the site’s position in search results. How to work out why a page was excluded from search is covered in a separate article.

The “Blocked by the noindex element” status means the page is closed to indexing by a noindex directive — check where the noindex directive on the page is coming from. The “Duplicate” and “Non-canonical” statuses relate to the choice of the page’s main version; more on why Yandex considers a page non-canonical.

Crawl statistics and server responses

What it shows. The “Indexing → Crawl statistics” report shows which pages the crawler visits, what server response codes it gets, and which addresses it couldn’t load because of server unavailability or errors. A response code is the three-digit HTTP code the server replies with: for example, 200 means the page was served, 404 means the page wasn’t found. The list can be filtered by response code.

When to check. After a release, a site move, or a change of hosting or server settings.

What to do. A spike in 4xx and 5xx errors or redirects after a release is a reason to find out which template, rule or link is causing it. Webmaster shows crawling through the eyes of the Yandex crawler; crawling the site yourself with a crawler helps find which pages link to the problem addresses.

The “Indexing → Crawl rate” setting controls how often the crawler requests the site; by default, it’s set to “Trust Yandex.”

“Check page” and “Page recrawl”

What they show. “Indexing → Check page” works with a single address: what response code the crawler gets, how it sees the page’s content, and whether the page is eligible to appear in search. “Indexing → Page recrawl” lets you tell Yandex about new and updated pages.

The number of addresses you can submit for recrawl is limited, and the limit resets every day. The “Request processed” status means the crawler visited the page, but doesn’t mean it indexed it.

When to use it. When you’ve fixed a page or published a new one. The crawler will visit submitted addresses as a priority the next time it accesses the site.

What to do. First open “Check page” and make sure the address responds with code 200 and isn’t closed to indexing. Then submit the page for recrawl — after fixing it, not “just in case”: it’s better to spend the limit on pages that have actually changed.

Site diagnostics: errors and recommendations

What it shows. The “Site optimization → Site diagnostics” section is where Yandex reports problems it found on the site. In the documentation’s “Quick start,” the item is named differently — “Optimization tips”; if the menu name doesn’t match, go by the “Site optimization” section and the “Errors” and “Recommendations” tabs. Tabs:

• “Errors” — found errors that need to be fixed;
• “Recommendations” — tips for configuring the site to improve its visibility in search;
• “Self-checks” — a list of recommendations and settings the service suggests paying attention to.

The number of errors and recommendations is also shown on the site’s dashboard and on the “My sites” page. Violations and security threats are listed in a separate section, “Site optimization → Security and violations.”

When to check. With every notification and after releases.

What to do. Work through the errors first, and put recommendations on your task list. After fixing an item, click “I fixed everything” next to it. The recommendations include, for example, “Missing title element and description meta tag” and “Pages have identical titles and descriptions” — for those, it helps to look at how to fix page titles and descriptions.

Webmaster’s diagnostics are ongoing monitoring, not a full site check. How a full SEO audit goes beyond Webmaster’s diagnostics is covered in a separate article.

Search queries: impressions, clicks and position

What it shows. The query reports in the documentation are called “Search query analytics” and “Search query monitoring.” They show the queries the site appeared for in Yandex search results, along with metrics for each: impressions, clicks, CTR and position. CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions, as a percentage. The “Manage search query groups” tool helps find out which queries show the site’s pages in search. A separate tool, “Search query selection and market analysis,” is available for finding new phrasings; it’s marked as beta in the documentation.

When to check. Once per reporting period, and after changes to key pages.

What to do. Look for pages showing up for queries that aren’t really theirs, and for queries that have no matching page on the site. The second case is a reason to revisit your keyword research: how to choose queries for a page and check demand.

What else is in Webmaster

• Sitelinks — “Search appearance → Sitelinks”: you can turn a link’s display in the snippet on or off and choose a different label for it.
• Favicon — the site’s icon in Yandex search results; it’s declared with a link in the head of the home page.
• Feeds — a way to send Yandex data about products and offers in YML format; structured data (schema.org) markup is an alternative.
• Structured data validator — checks microformats, schema.org, Open Graph, HTML microdata and RDFa; more on which markup types the validator checks.
• Webmaster API — gives access to the service’s data about sites, for example to export reports into your own systems.

What to check regularly

The rhythm below is a recommendation, not a Yandex requirement: it’s more practical to tie checks to events on the site than to a calendar.

What to check	Where in Webmaster	When to check	What to do if there’s a problem
Diagnostic errors	“Site optimization → Site diagnostics,” “Errors” tab	On notification; after a release	Fix it, click “I fixed everything”
Excluded pages that should be in search	“Indexing → Pages in search,” “Excluded pages” tab	After a release; once per reporting period	Find the reason from the status, fix it, submit for recrawl
Response codes after changes	“Indexing → Crawl statistics”	After a release, a site move, or a hosting change	Find the template or rule causing 4xx / 5xx errors or extra redirects
Sitemap files	“Indexing → Sitemap files”	After a structure change or Sitemap regeneration	Check the processing status and fix the file
robots.txt	“Tools → robots.txt analysis”	After every edit to the file	Make sure important pages aren’t disallowed
Rights and access	“My sites,” “Settings → Access rights”	After a template, hosting or DNS change; when a contractor changes	Restore the verification code; revoke unneeded roles
Queries for key pages	Search query reports	Once per reporting period	Check queries against pages, find queries with no matching page

Webmaster shows symptoms: excluded pages, server errors, diagnostic warnings. If the same problems come back after every release, the cause is usually not individual pages but the templates or the release process. In that case, one-off fixes only help briefly, and what’s needed is a technical analysis of crawling and indexing errors that tracks down the cause.

If you need a check of the whole technical foundation rather than a look at individual reports, an SEO audit with a technical check and a prioritized task list fits better.

Frequently asked questions

Can Webmaster be used without verifying rights?

Partly. Some tools can be used without verification, but with limited functionality. For example, “robots.txt analysis” can check the file of a site that isn’t even added to the service. Reports about your own site open only after verifying your rights.

Do the www version and subdomains need to be added separately?

Subdomains — yes: Yandex treats a subdomain as a separate site, and rights to it are verified separately, including through simplified verification. The www and non-www versions are also different addresses for Yandex; add the main one, and if the address changes, use the site move tool.

What happens if the verification file or meta tag is deleted?

At the next check, Yandex won’t find the code, and the site will become unverified; delegated users will lose access. More in the “Why verification can be lost” section.

How does Yandex Webmaster differ from Google Search Console?

These are services from different search engines: each one shows how its own search engine sees your site. If the site gets traffic from both Yandex and Google, you need both.

What should you do if you get a notification about an error on the site?

Open “Site optimization → Site diagnostics,” the “Errors” tab, and work through the item using the description in the service. After fixing it, click “I fixed everything” — more in the section on diagnostics.