Know the limits before you start
Yandex is the leading search engine in Russia and widely used across Russian-speaking countries. Its autocomplete is rich for Russian and solid for English. For some other languages, including Vietnamese, it returns few or no suggestions. If your seed comes back nearly empty, the language is the likely reason; switch to an English or Russian seed, or use another source such as Keyword Suggest or the Bing Keyword Tool.
Who gets the most out of Yandex suggestions
- Sites targeting Russian speakers: travel, real estate, education and e-commerce brands entering Russia, Kazakhstan or Belarus.
- Tourism businesses courting Russian-speaking visitors, who often search with a mix of Cyrillic and Latin place names.
- Exporters researching how buyers describe a product category in Russian.
- English-language publishers who want a second opinion beyond Google's suggestions.
How suggestions and metrics are collected
The tool queries Yandex autocomplete with your seed, the seed followed by each letter a–z, and common question prefixes. Results are merged into a de-duplicated list of up to about 300 suggestions.
We then attach Google search data to every suggestion: average monthly search volume, a 12- or 24-month trend, CPC low and high, competition from 0 to 100 and KD from 5 to 99. We do not have Yandex's own search counts, so Google volume serves as the demand signal. Keep in mind that in markets where Yandex holds a large share, Google numbers can understate real demand. They are best used to compare keywords against each other rather than to forecast exact traffic.
Step-by-step
- Enter a seed in English or Russian, for example "moscow apartments" or "купить кофе".
- Pick the target country and language. About 200 countries and 40+ languages are supported.
- Filter by volume, word count, KD or CPC, and sort to bring the strongest candidates to the top.
- Copy the list, export to Excel/CSV, add it to a keyword plan, or open it in the Keyword Grouper to map phrases to pages.
Tips for working with Russian keywords
Watch word forms
Russian is heavily inflected, so the same idea can appear in several grammatical forms. Group them together rather than writing a page for each ending.
Translate in bulk, then verify
If you do not read Russian, export the list and machine-translate it to understand intent, then have a native speaker review your final targets before writing.
Mind transliteration
Brand and place names show up both in Cyrillic and in Latin letters. Check both spellings, since volume and intent can differ noticeably between them.
KD is our estimate from ad competition, keyword length and search volume, not from backlink data. Use it to shortlist, then review the live results.
Plans
A free account (Google sign-in or Gmail link, no card) gives 10 credits a day with full data for the first 5 results of each search. Lite is $2/month for 1,000 credits, Starter $9/month for 10,000, Pro $19/month for 25,000; each search uses one credit.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my Vietnamese seed return nothing?
Yandex autocomplete has very little data for Vietnamese and some other languages. Use an English or Russian seed, or switch to Google, Bing or Yahoo suggestions for those languages.
Is the search volume from Yandex?
No. It is average monthly Google search volume. Where Yandex dominates, use it to compare keywords rather than predict exact traffic.
Can I research Russian keywords without speaking Russian?
Yes. Export the results, translate them in bulk to understand intent, and have a native speaker confirm the final keywords before you publish.
Should I target Cyrillic or Latin spellings?
Often both. Many users type brand and place names in Latin letters while writing the rest in Cyrillic. Check each version and cover the main variants on the same page.
How many suggestions can one search return?
Up to about 300 for well-covered languages like Russian and English. Free accounts see full data for the first 5 results; paid plans show the full list.