Yandex.Q is a search service unique to the Russian-language search engine Yandex, which is comparable to Google in its functions.
Launched on 19 February 2010, it was initially named “lite” in English and later renamed “Q&A” in Russian. The service allows users to ask questions and receive answers from other users who are willing to answer them (though these answers are not necessarily experts). Yandex.Q also has an image search function that provides results of pictures related to the question.
Yandex.Q is not intended to be a search engine in the traditional sense of the term, and as such is ranked based not on queries but on answers.
Therefore, Yandex.Q should never be confused with Google or Yahoo!, and users should not expect to find relevant search results that match their query exactly.
However, despite this important caveat, Yandex.Q is still able to provide accurate results for a wide range of searches, and can even perform better than the English language version of Yandex’s official search engine.
Yandex. Q was initially created by Yandex in order to help users find quick answers to questions related to the present day.
The founders of RusLan, a popular Russian-language Internet forum, claimed that they were the first to come up with the idea of a search engine that would provide answers and urge them to join forces with Yandex. However, after attempting to develop the project without Yandex’s involvement they found that it was almost impossible for independent developers to create something similar.
The way in which it appears on search results depends. Most of the time, it appears below all other search results, which is also the default setting. However, when a user clicks “more” during the search process and then sorts by “answered questions” Yandex.Q appears above all other results.
The most popular information requests are general questions about weather, directions to a certain location and instructions on how to use a certain object (e.q. how to use an air conditioner).
However, users can also ask questions about very specific topics or particular brands such as Apple.
