OREANDA-NEWS. April 24, 2009. Yandex launches a program to support websites offering local content. Any website can create a special unit (widget) that users can embed within their personalized Yandex front page. The most interesting and popular regional widgets will be offered right on www.yandex.ru.

Widget is an information unit of a website that can be integrated into another website. Currently, Yandex runs on its front page widgets of a number of its services – News, Afisha, Traffic. Users can customize a widget’s content or its position on a page, and click through to the website it represents.

First and foremost, Yandex is interested in widgets that offer local content – news from a local football club or rental ads. These widgets will be organized in a special regional catalog, and Yandex will show links to the most popular of them on its front page.

"We believe that Yandex’s start page should satisfy the users’ information needs as much as possible, give answers to implicit questions like ‘what’s new?’, ‘what’s on tonight?’, ‘what’s it like outside today?’,” says Alexander Laryanovsky, head of Yandex's Regional Development. “Every region has websites that best understand the needs of the people who live there. The regional program will help these websites offer their content to larger audiences and allow us to improve our main page. In the end, the user is the one who benefits most". The Yandex front page implemented the widget technology last fall.