[7] The search product can be accessed from personal computers, mobile phones, tablets and other digital devices.

In 2009, Yandex launched MatrixNet, a new method of machine learning that significantly improves the relevance of search results.

The system automatically analyses users' searches and identifies objects like personal names, films or cars.

[9] With the first release on 21 July 2017, Brave web browser features Yandex as one of its default search engines.

[10] In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yandex and Mail.ru were removed as optional search providers from the Mozilla Firefox browser.

[11] The search engine consists of three main components:[12] In general, Yandex indexes the following file types:[15] html, pdf, rtf, doc, xls, ppt, docx, odt, odp, ods, odg, xlsx, pptx.

The search engine is also able to index text inside Shockwave Flash objects (if the text is not placed on the image itself), if these elements are transferred as a separate page, which has the MIME type application/x-shockwave-flash , and files with the extension .swf[16] Yandex has 2 scanning robots - the “main” and the “fast”.

In 2010, the “fast” robot received a new technology called “Orange”, developed jointly by the California and Moscow divisions of Yandex.

In addition, the search query practically does not take into account the so-called stop-words, that is, prepositions, punctuation, pronouns, etc., due to their wide distribution[12] As a rule, abbreviations are automatically disclosing, spelling is correcting.

Expansion does not occur when a set of highly specialized terms, names of proper names of companies (for example, OJSC “Hippo” - OJSC “Hippopotamus”), adding the word “price”, in exact quotes (these are queries highlighted with typewriter quotes).

The search is performed in Russian, English, French, German, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tatar, Kazakh.

The snippets includes a text comment, link, address, popular sections of the site, pages on social networks, etc.

As a result, in response to a user's request, the system shows not only textual information, but also links to video files, pictures, dictionary entries, etc.

Search results from the Yandex search engine tend to favor Russian media sources, including state media, and Yandex-delivered ads tend to promote misinformation and propaganda produced by more than half a dozen Russian-language news sites.

[24][25] One study found that Yandex-delivered adverts ran alongside false stories about US bioweapons labs in Ukraine, claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a drug user, and reports repeating Kremlin claims that the war against Ukraine is going entirely to plan.

Other fake news promoted by Yandex ads referred to the Russian invasion by using Kremlin talking points, calling the war an “operation to denazify and demilitarise Ukraine”.

[26] Another analysis found that Yandex directs Russian speakers worldwide to manipulated information and often to outright disinformation.

The Yandex program, when accessing the site, checks whether the latter requested additional files from the browser, redirected it to an extraneous resource, etc.

Thus, if information is received that the site begins to perform certain actions (cascading style sheets, JavaScript modules are launched and complete programs) without user permission, it is placed in the “black list” and in the database of virus signatures.

[30] For a long time, the key ranking factor for Yandex was the number of third-party links to a particular site.

In order to prevent cheating, Yandex uses multivariate analysis, in which only 70 of the 800 factors are affected by the number of third-party links.

In 2012, the so-called “Smart Search Hints” appeared, which instantly give out information about the main constants (equator length, speed of light, and so on), traffic jams, and have a built-in calculator.

In addition, a translator was integrated in the “Hints” (the query “love in French” instantly gives out amour, affection ), the schedule and results of football matches, exchange rates, weather forecasts and more.

[54] The number of daily queries to the Yandex search engine exceeded 2 million[55] Indexing .rtf and .pdf documents was launched.

[60] At the end of the year, the study “Some Aspects of Full-Text Search and Ranking in Yandex Archived 2022-04-09 at the Wayback Machine” was published (authors Ilya Segalovich, Mikhail Maslov ), which revealed certain ranking details in a search engine.

[61] In summer, the so-called “fast” search robot was launched, working in parallel with the actual pages intended for indexing.

[75] In 2009, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev initiated the purchase of a “golden share” of Yandex by Sberbank in order to avoid an important nationwide company falling into foreign hands.

[82] One of the components of this situation is the presence in Russia of a sufficient number of mathematically savvy specialists with a scientific instinct.