Introduction
Yandex is the leading search engine in Russia, which offers browser, email, news, news aggregator, maps and translator services and focuses on Russian, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and Turkey markets. More information on SEO Optimization for Yandex.
In 2017, Yandex announced Turbo pages. Turbo pages are similar to Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), and they are essentially light versions of web pages, which load 15 times faster than regular pages on the 3G connection or WiFi when the connection drops to 128kbps.
Yandex uses the specific RSS feed in order to build such an optimized page layout. The feed is afterwards being stored on Yandex servers and used by the Yandex content delivery network. Turbo pages technology is used, for example, in Yandex.News, Yandex.Zen and other Yandex services. The Turbo page can be easily recognized as it is marked by a jet icon .
Benefits of Turbo pages on Yandex
- page-load is 15 times faster than all other regular pages
- bounce rate for such pages is reduced by 30% (average)
- reduced server load
- chance to have your news in Yandex snippet
- number of views is increased by 30%
How to set up Turbo Pages
Turbo pages need to be set up in the Service's Yandex Webmaster account. If your Service wants to set up Turbo pages, please send a request to Pangea Customer Care team (available for RFE/RL sites).
First Turbo pages implementation results
In November 2019, the first RFE/RL service - Russian - set up their first Turbo pages in the Yandex Webmaster tool with the help of the Pangea Team. In the first couple of days after the implementation, the Service has noticed a dramatic increase in the page views and achieved more than 54.000 new users (the traffic from other sources has not been affected).
Please bear in mind, that content is a key to success. Without good quality content the technology will not bring significant results.