Yandex ‘leak’ reveals 1,922 search ranking factors
Yandex search ranking factors
SEOs have already started analyzing Yandex’s search ranking factors, which include PageRank and several other link-related factors
A former employee allegedly released a Yandex sources code repository that included more than 1,900 elements that search engines use to determine the order in which search results are displayed.
As some of you may be aware, Yandex was allegedly the victim of a source code leak (or perhaps was hacked).
Within the source code, there’s an entire list of ranking factors they use, the weighting, descriptions, internal wiki links, etc.
There are over 1900 individual ranking factors listed, starting at “PageRank” and going down into all sorts of detail that may surprise many.
If you’re planning to look through the entire listing of Yandex ranking factors, keep in mind that Yandex isn’t Google. If you come across an element of ranking listed by Yandex it doesn’t mean Google will give that signal that is the same weight. In reality, Google may not use all the 1,922 factors that are listed.
That said, a lot of these ranking factors may be quite similar. So reviewing this document may provide some useful insights to better help you understand how search engines, such as Google, work from a technological standpoint.
Yandex calls it a leak. Because the code appeared on a popular hacking forum, it was first thought that Yandex was hacked. Yandex has denied this, and provided the following statement:
Yandex Calls it a Leak
“Yandex was not hacked. Our security service found code fragments from an internal repository in the public domain, but the content differs from the current version of the repository used in Yandex services.
A repository is a tool for storing and working with code. Code is used in this way internally by most companies.
Repositories are needed to work with code and are not intended for the storage of personal user data. We are conducting an internal investigation into the reasons for the release of source code fragments to the public, but we do not see any threat to user data or platform performance.”
Yandex ranking factors list. MacDonald shared the full list of 1,922 factors here I highly recommend downloading it, as I fully expect Yandex will try to scrub this information from the internet.
FOR NOW: if you find anything noteworthy or interesting in the rules they use, please leave a comment below and lets get some conversation going!
Some of the ranking factors SEOs are finding surprising: are the number of unique visitors, percent of organic traffic, and average domain ranking across queries.
Download Minified Version Here
Other Resources:
Excel Work: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KBD-7htFgT3qyMNNouHAyujCqMOi12grJgVgQyNw9sg/edit#gid=0
https://gist.github.com/ArseniyShestakov
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