Yandex Launches New Algorithm Named Palekh to Improve Search Results for Long-Tail Queries

Yandex announced on their Russian blog that they have launched a new algorithm aimed at improving how they handle long-tail queries.

The new algorithm is named "Palekh", which is the name of a world-famous Russian city that has a firebird on its coat of arms.


The firebird has a long tail, and Yandex, the largest Russian search engine, used that as code name for long-tail queries.

Long-tail queries are several words entered into the search box, more often seen in voice queries these days. Yandex says about 100 million queries per day fall under the “long-tail” classification within their search engine.

Yandex said they do use machine learning and explained that they teach their “neural network based on these queries will lead to some advancements in answering conversational based queries in the future.” Adding that they “also have many targets (long click prediction, CTR, “click or not click” models and so on) that are teaching our neural network — our research has showed that using more targets is more effective.”