Crawling pages using a Yandex Metrica tag

Yandex can discover pages through the Metrica analytics tag rather than only through links and sitemaps. There is no Google equivalent, and for sites whose sections are reachable only through forms, filters or script-driven navigation it is the difference between being crawled and being invisible.

Who has to agree

Linking needs both sides. A request from Webmaster (sent by someone with site rights) is confirmed by a Metrica user with tag-editing or executive access; a request from Metrica works in reverse. If the same person owns both, it confirms automatically. Domain matching ignores protocol and the www prefix — several domains can share one tag, and several tags can be linked to one site.

Statuses

Waiting for confirmation, Linked (crawling begins), Not confirmed (cancelled by either side), and Confirmation error — which has three concrete causes: the site is not in the console, its rights are not verified, or the tag ID was entered incorrectly.

The review step, which is the important part

After enabling crawling under Indexing → Tags crawl, the robot finds pages and Yandex shows you examples before proceeding, notifying you when the list is ready. This is a safety mechanism, because the tag sits on every page a visitor reaches — including pages that should never be indexed. Yandex names the categories to look for:

• Action pages — add to basket, compare items. Block from indexing.
• Baskets with a product in them. Block.
• Personal information — customer delivery addresses, phone numbers. Do not merely block: restrict access behind authentication.
• Duplicates such as URLs with extra parameters. Declare the preferred page.

Fix, wait for the list to refresh, review again, then enable indexing. Skipping this review is how private URLs reach a search index.

Scope

Once enabled, the setting applies to every version of the site — HTTP and HTTPS, with and without www.