How to Ukrainize the Domestic Internet Segment

After Russia's full-scale invasion, most Ukrainians are consciously trying to abandon everything related to the aggressor country, including Russian-language Internet content.

For obvious reasons, there is much more information in Russian on the Internet than in Ukrainian. After all, the majority of our compatriots want to read Ukrainian sites.

The situation can be gradually corrected, but it will take some time. Let's talk about ways to Ukrainianize our segment of the Internet.

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According to the results of the Serpstat study, some Ukrainian-language queries are experiencing an increase in frequency along with a decrease in Russian-language queries. 

Before the full-scale invasion, 75% of queries were in Russian. After the war, the share of queries in Ukrainian increased to 35% (which is +10% compared to previous figures).

This trend is good news for SEO specialists and content marketers.

• Firstly, the growth in demand for Ukrainian-language text content is actually confirmed.
• In addition, there is an opportunity to occupy niches that were previously dominated by Russian-language web resources.

You can track changes in Ukrainians' language preferences when searching using Google Trends.

Bilingual country

The Ukrainianization of our Internet segment will definitely happen, but now Google identifies Ukraine as a bilingual country. And the priority is still on the side of Russian-language content.

• Search algorithms show the user Russian sites, even despite using Ukrainian-language queries. 
• At the same time, most Russian sites are blocked in Ukraine. That is, the user receives a search result in which a significant part of the links does not work (they can only be opened throughVPN). 

A logical question arises: how to change the situation? 

Can I block sites by location or domain?  

Many have probably considered the possibility of blocking sites by location or domain. 

For example, we wondered if it was possible to remove sites from search results by removing Russia in the geolocation settings?  

And also about whether it is possible to check the checkboxes for domains that you want to avoid? For example, is it possible to prohibit the appearance of sites with the national domain .ru in the results? 

Unfortunately, this is not possible. 

Yes, the search engine takes into account the country from which the user makes the requests – this happens automatically. But the options to manually add or exclude sites from geolocation ordomainGoogle doesn't have one.

Ukrainianization of the Internet

The process began with the gradual rejection of Russian services by businesses and the transitionsitesinto Ukrainianhostingsand servers.

We have detailed the mass blocking of domains and websites of Russian clients by hosting providers from Ukraine.HERE.

CompanyNIC.UAAfter the start of the full-scale war, it immediately decided to block all domains from customers from Russia. It also completely refused to accept orders for RU/SU/РФ domains.

We publicly announced the termination of work with the aggressor country on our social networks and officially notified clients in the newsletter.

This is exactly what other companies did, and this is also a way to counter the aggressor. And also an important step towards a gradual but irreversible increase in the number of Ukrainian websites!

Increasing demand for Ukrainian-language publications

Yes, there is much less Ukrainian content now. For some time there will still be a shortage of sites with information in the state language of our country. But!

As soon as the demand for Ukrainian-language publications increases, the Ukrainization of the local Internet sector will automatically accelerate.

What can be done now? Increase the number of Ukrainian-language articles aboutlatest technologies, financial management,cryptocurrency,investments,training,choosing a profession,taxesetc.

A breakthrough will definitely happen, including thanks to the Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language". 

Language Law

We alreadywrote, which fromOn July 16, 2022, all Ukrainian Internet resources must finally switch to the state language of our country.

We remind you that in accordance with the requirements of the law:

• online representation (in particular,website) a business entity that "sells goods and services in Ukraine and is registered in Ukraine,performed in the state language";
• "versiononline representative officesin the state languagemust havenot less in volumeandcontent of informationthanforeign-speakingversions, anddownload by default for users in Ukraine".

Amount of text information

Regarding the new requirements forvolume of informationWe advise you to take into account an important aspect.

If you already have a website and you urgently need to translate its content from Russian to the state language, remember:    

• The Ukrainian language is more concise - a literal translation of a Russian text into Ukrainian may be shorter than the original.
• Don't forget to check this parameter before uploading Ukrainian versions of articles or other text information to pages.the main version of the site. 

How to replace Tilda and how to make the Ukrainian version of the site the main one, read onexile.

How can I help?  

And can an ordinary user who is not familiar withSEO optimization, influence search robots and force them to increase the number of Ukrainian-language web resources in Google results? Is it possible to not see Russian sites in the list at all? 

Yes, anyone can join the process of expanding the borders of the Ukrainian-language Internet. And the least you can do is "teach" the search engineto the nightingale. 

There is an easy way to achieve this using Google Chrome's language settings and your Google account. We will explain how to do this in detail in the followingmaterial.

Conclusion

The ways of Ukrainization of the domestic segment of the Internet are accessible and understandable. Gradually, we will definitely teach Google Search algorithms to select Ukrainian-language content. 

And right now, it's important for businesses to remember thatbasic versionsitemust be Ukrainian.

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