Yandex Zen – personal recommendations feed

Yandex Zen is a service of personal recommendations based on the user’s interests in the form of an endless news feed. In 2017, Yandex launched a special news feed that hosts publications from thematic sites and specially created channels in Yandex Zen.

The display order of certain publications is formed automatically, based on the behavior on the Internet and user preferences. The neural network filters content by content, similar or identical interests are taken into account. With the help of recognition technology, the algorithm understands the content of the text in images and other graphic files.

A sophisticated machine learning algorithm determines what to show to a particular user based on the analysis of browser history and search queries. At the same time, many factors are analyzed: the total amount of time spent on the Internet, the time spent on sites of a certain category, transitions to certain pages are taken into account, etc.

For example, if you are interested in cooking, then a lot of posts dedicated to this topic will get into the feed. Therefore, a user who spends a lot of time on the Internet will receive articles formed mainly on the basis of their personal interests.

Recommendations from Yandex Zen are equally useful for both parties:

• Users receive news in accordance with their interests in a personal feed.
• Webmasters receive additional traffic to their sites from the Zen feed.

Zen will adjust to your interests within a short period of time, you will receive a unique feed of recommended publications, formed for you. It is very convenient to receive the latest news on interesting topics.

Personal news feed Yandex Zen

The news feed works online, recommendations are displayed on the main page of Yandex, on a special page of the service https://zen.yandex.ru , in Yandex Browser, in Yandex Launcher on Android devices.

On the main page of the Yandex search engine, open in any browser, there is a Yandex Zen news feed. Most users do not see or notice it, because Zen news is located at the very bottom of the web page, which is not visible on the monitor screen. Scroll down the Yandex home page to open Yandex Zen.

Here you will see a selection of news in the Yandex Zen feed, mainly news, entertainment and thematic. Each publication is placed as a separate card (tile). As a rule, against the background of the image, the title of the news is displayed, a small fragment of text from the article, the name of the site is indicated. After clicking on the publication, there will be a transition to the source of the news (to the corresponding page of the site on the Internet).

The user can independently form their preferences. From a mobile device, it is possible to add a site to the list of interesting publications, after that, this website will fall into this category on a computer (after authorization). Publications from this site (not all news) and from sites of similar subjects will be shown more often in the personal feed.

Each card has special icons for likes or dislikes. In Yandex Zen, likes and dislikes help the user decide on the most interesting news for him:

• If he put a dislike for a certain publication, then the next time, the display of such recommendations will be stopped. Please note that you can permanently block a news source (you can only remove a block from a site or from a channel in the mobile version of Zen).
• A like will give a signal that the article has generated interest, so Zen will show more of this kind of material.

Among the cards (tiles) with recommended news, there are blocks with ads, which are marked with the inscription “Yandex.Direct”.

Basically, articles are published in Zen through a special RSS feed from sites accepted in Zen. Adding photos, videos, gif animations to the feed is supported. Yandex closely monitors publications, does not allow publishing information prohibited by the rules, removes sites from Zen that publish content copied from other sources.

How to enable Yandex Zen

In addition to the main page of Yandex, the Zen news feed works in browsers. Yandex Zen is included by default in Yandex Browser. After opening a new tab, you will see the news feed located under the table with your favorite sites, and you can start reading it.

In order to enable the Yandex Zen news feed, perform the browser settings:

1. In the Yandex.Browser window, click the “Yandex Browser Settings” button, select “Settings” in the context menu.
2. In the “Appearance settings” section, check the box next to “Show in a new Zen tab – personal recommendations feed”, and then close the settings tab.
3. Click on the “Advanced Settings” button.
4. In the “Personal data” section, in the “Improve the accuracy of Zen recommendations and the quality of ads using data from the browser” setting, select the browser that you use most often from the list (Google Chrome is selected by default).

Now, after opening a new tab of the browser start page, you will see personalized recommendations.

To display the Zen feed in other browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera), install the Visual Bookmarks extension from Yandex (new version, old version of visual bookmarks is not supported). In the visual bookmarking settings, enable Zen in a new tab.

Also, do not forget about the main page of Yandex, where there is a backup of recommended news.

How to disable Yandex Zen

If you want to remove Yandex Zen, disable the display of recommendations in your browser settings from Yandex.

Enter the Yandex Browser settings, follow these steps:

1. In the Appearance Settings section, uncheck the box next to Show in New Zen Tab – Personal Recommendations Feed, and then close the settings tab.
2. After that, the news feed will no longer be displayed in the browser, you will have Yandex without Zen.

In other browsers, disable the display of Zen in the settings of the Visual Bookmarks extension.

On the Yandex page, click in the lower right corner on the “Collapse entertainment content” button in order to disable the downloadable Zen news feed.

Yandex Zen for mobile devices

To display Zen on mobile devices, Yandex Browser for Android and iOS is suitable. In the Yandex mobile browser, you can enable or disable the display of the Zen feed.

Alternatively, you can use the Yandex.Launcher app, the Yandex app, or the Yandex.Zen app for Android that publishes the news feed.

Article Conclusions

Yandex Zen is a personal recommendation service and publishing platform. Zen offers users publications based on the preferences of a particular person, selected using artificial intelligence.