What is Yandex Metrica?

Yandex Metrica is Yandex’s web analytics system. A site counter records hits and sessions, counts goals and e-commerce events, builds source reports, and provides qualitative tools: Webvisor (session replay), click maps, scroll maps, and link maps. In Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other CIS markets, Metrica is the default way to measure a website: it is installed on landings, shops, and corporate pages where Google Analytics is inconvenient, unavailable, or does not meet data-residency requirements.

Metrica is often confused with Yandex Direct. Direct buys impressions and clicks. Metrica measures what happened after the click landed on the site. The products are linked (yclid, goals for bidding strategies, report reconciliation), but they are different systems. This article is about analytics, not how to build Direct campaigns.

What the counter records

Pages load a JavaScript counter (tag). On each pageview it sends a hit: URL, referrer, UTM parameters, User-Agent, GEO from IP, and a first-party cookie ID. A visit (session) is a sequence of hits from one visitor with a timeout (usually 30 minutes of inactivity). A visitor approximates a unique user by cookie, not a person forever: browser switches, Safari ITP, and cookie clears split the audience.

Goals describe a desired action: reaching a URL (thank-you page), a JavaScript event, a click on a selector, a form submit, page depth, or visit duration. Autogoals are suggested by Metrica itself — for example a tap on a phone number or a messenger click. For a shop you send cart contents, value, and a transaction ID; otherwise average order value and the purchase funnel stay empty.

Visit parameters and visitor parameters let you attach custom fields: offer type, landing variant, login status. That is not a substitute for sub IDs in a tracker: parameters live in site analytics and do not participate in affiliate postbacks.

Reports and qualitative tools

Core reports: sources, channels, UTMs, landing pages, devices, geography, conversions by goal. In performance work, bounce, time on site, and the path to a goal diagnose the landing. A high bounce with a normal ad-account CTR usually means a mismatch between the ad and the page, not “broken” analytics.

Webvisor records the session: pointer movement, scroll, clicks, form input (with field masking). Click, link, and scroll maps aggregate the same interactions. Form analysis shows which field drops the lead. That UX layer does not exist in a typical click tracker: the tracker answers “which click was paid,” Metrica answers “what the person did on your domain.”

Attribution in Metrica

Metrica reports can recompute conversions under several attribution models. The current set, after some models were turned off on 20 May 2026:

Last click — the source of the current visit, no history. Used for technical reconciliation with Direct and to find pages missing the counter (internal transitions).
Last significant click (cross-device) — insignificant sources (direct, internal, saved pages) yield to the previous significant channel. If a user arrived from an ad and bought after a direct visit, the conversion stays with the ad.
First click (cross-device) — later visits inherit the first source in the history. Useful on a long sales cycle.
Automatic attribution — Yandex’s model on cross-device signals and anonymized data (including households). It is not the same as data-driven attribution in GA4.

The attribution window is fixed: a 90-day gap resets visit history; you cannot change it. Cross-device matching uses Yandex Crypta. These are site reports, not CPA-network payout rules: last-click in an affiliate network and “last significant” in Metrica will not always match. “Last Yandex Direct click” models are gone from the UI — they were retired with the non-cross-device first/last-significant variants.

Tie-in with ads and a tracker

A typical CIS setup: Direct ad → tracker URL or landing with UTMs and yclid → Metrica counter → goal or e-commerce event. Metrica goals are passed into Direct to train strategies. Offline conversions are uploaded from a CRM when the lead closes on a call or later.

The counter is placed in page code or via Google Tag Manager. Meta and TikTok pixel tracking are separate tags: Metrica does not send events into Western ad accounts. That requires a pixel and a Conversion API.

What Metrica is not

Metrica does not compute ROI by creative and does not accept an affiliate postback. It is not an MMP (mobile measurement partner) and does not attribute app installs. On a third-party offer domain you often cannot place your own counter — then the tracker and the source ad account remain.

Limits: ad blockers and consent banners cut tag coverage. Under GDPR the counter should not fire before consent. Quotas and report sampling depend on plan and hit volume. Webvisor and raw logs are personal data; in Russia 152-FZ applies.