Webmaster Tools Now Signals Featured Snippet Opportunities

Yandex recently introduced a feature within Webmaster Tools allowing webmasters to better understand how Yandex views the verified website, and which featured snippets and rich results the site does – and doesn’t – qualify for.

The special results Webmaster currently provides information for are:

  • Turbo page “wizard”
  • Business feature
  • News feature

The snippet results that you can get information for are:

  • Title and description (basics)
  • Favicon (basics)
  • Site quality mark badges
  • HTTPS
  • Images
  • Sitelinks
  • Article galleries
  • Product featurette
  • Product listings
  • Local information (rating, phone number, and address)

The feedback provided by Yandex Webmaster tools is as simple as a green checkmark, or amber warning symbol.

A green checkmark means that the opportunity is being used by the site. The likelihood that a special answer or an extended snippet will be shown in the search increases.

An orange exclamation mark indicates that the opportunity is not yet used by the site. This is worth paying attention to as is a clear opportunity.

For example, at the time of writing this article, Russian Search News could qualify for the Yandex article gallery, however, as the site is in English and not Russian, it’s unlikely that pursuing this opportunity will yield benefit for the site (I’m going to optimize for this now, so watch this space and watch me be wrong).

Yandex Webmaster Tools highlighting the Article Gallery opportunity.

It also contains information on the site quality badges that you can qualify for, and tells you which ones you have been awarded:

Site Quality Badge Opportunities, Status, & Notifications

Yandex hopes that this information will help webmasters improve the display of websites in search results, and make the experience better for users in satisfying the intent and desire behind their queries.

Dan Taylor
Dan Taylor is an experienced SEO consultant and has worked with brands and companies on optimizing for Russia (and Yandex) for a number of years. Winner of the inaugural 2018 TechSEO Boost competition, webmaster at HreflangChecker.com and Sloth.Cloud, and founder of RussianSearchNews.com.