Do you have an example? A simple search of information around the Russia-Ukraine conflict has Yandex actively suggesting I search for the "Russian-Ukraine war" (despite references to a war being illegal in Russia) and the first result is a Russian wikipedia article that seems, if anything, pro-Ukraine.
Looking up "Putin election" delivers me several prominent articles saying Russia's most recent election was fraudulent.
I'm guessing it is different if you are actually based in mainland Russia and using Yandex, but it does not seem so tilted as you are suggesting for Western, english users.
Interesting, I never used Yandex tbh. I thought it was under indirect state control, like vk and others. Will try to use it more often to see what results it has.
They are. Their news section only has media that is state approved. They probably don't even have much of a choice, if they don't want to be shut down...
I'm in Germany. I simply searched for "Ukraine" and set the result language to "German". The first two results are from "Russia Today" and "News-Front", both well known for skewing facts or outright lying. "News-Front" for example reports that Putin is supposedly very popular in Germany and Austria. This isn't true at all. The only people who are worshiping him are the far-right and far-left. They are not the majority.
Searching for "Deutschland" results in "deutschland.de" which is ok but then, once again, followed by "News-Front" and "anti-spiegel", some crappy Wordpress conspiracy blog. I also took the liberty to search for "Proteste in Deutschland" (protests in Germany), and low and behold: First 3 results: Wikipedia, "Russia Today" and "Report24". The last one yet another propaganda website run by "Querdenker" (our version of Qanon-style Antivaxx nutjobs).
Searching for "Ukraine Krieg" (Ukraine war) once again leads to RT and News-Front.
"Energiewende" is also a quite popular word in Germany. What does yandex say to this? Again, first 2 results are ok. Third result? That shitty Querdenker page "Report24" again. 5th result is Russia Today. And somewhere at the end i even spot "Reitschuster", a known right-extremist blog.
There is no way in hell, that these websites are so well optimized, that they outperform every single outlet in existence, for pretty much every keyword i can think of just now. Especially not some shitty Wordpress page (Report24) that was clicked together in mere days and online for just a single year.
Searching for these keywords in the localized version of Google and even Bing gives wildly different results. There is no sign that any outlets are preferred. Sometimes i see right-leaning sources on the top of the first page, sometimes it's left-leaning, other times it's some trash tabloid like the "BILD".
So either their search algorithm is complete and utter trash, or they are actively boosting pro-russian websites and mix them up with a few established news outlets, to make them seem more trustworthy. Since their "news" section is also only allowed to show state-approved media, my guess wouldn't be very far off.
interesting. I see what you mean when I just search "Ukraine" on Yandex in English, with both RT & Sputnik featuring prominently.
Multi-word searches seem less prone to this. What happens if you search "Putin election" in German? Do you get articles critiquing the election or still praiseworthy articles?
"Putin wahl": First result is a marketplace in Russian. Everything else on the first page seems to be German + 1 Austrian, and they're quite critical, of course. RT and the other Russian propaganda pages only show up at page 5, but none of them mention the election.
I do get several captcha requests from the website now. Might be coincidence, because i'm on a different computer now. It does get annoying, though. Like, really annoying. Clicking 1 or 2 pages leads to yet another captcha.
Looking up "Putin election" delivers me several prominent articles saying Russia's most recent election was fraudulent.
I'm guessing it is different if you are actually based in mainland Russia and using Yandex, but it does not seem so tilted as you are suggesting for Western, english users.