Yandex Adds Search for Mobile Apps

Finding smart phone games and apps in Russian has just gotten easier. Russian search giant Yandex launched a new search engine for mobile apps yesterday at apps.yandex.ru.

In a market that is dominated by Symbian, the Yandex.AppSearch returns results for all platforms. However, it doesn’t require the exact name of an app in order to deliver relevant results. In addition to various keywords and other ranking factors, the search algorithm also takes app ratings into account when returning results.

All results are returned in Russian, even if the initial query was in English. However, if a particular app is not written in Russian, the app will still be returned. For example, people searching for ‘Monopoly’ will be able to download the mobile version of the popular board game from the App Store even though it isn’t featured there in Russian.