Russian search engine Yandex has announced that its search rankings will now take into account the popularity of content featured on Facebook.
Both companies reached an agreement for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, other commonwealth independent states (CIS) and Turkey, that allows Yandex to index any posts currently shared as public by Facebook users.
Yandex hopes to use Facebook’s public data feed to improve the overall quality of its search results. For example, users will now be able to discover what other Facebook account holders are saying about the latest news or movies.
Articles and videos will only be featured in search results if they are deemed appropriate by Yandex and have been found to resonate with Facebook users. Any profiles or posts marked as private will not be searchable.
The Russian firm revealed the next step is to incorporate the comments made by others in Facebook users’ posts into its search results.