SEO Is War —

Details amusement however the world's fourth-largest hunt motor ranks webpages.

Kevin Purdy - Jan 30, 2023 5:37 p.m. UTC

Enlarge / The Russian logo of Yandex, the country's largest hunt motor and a tech institution with galore divisions, wrong the company's headquarters.

SOPA Images / Getty Images

Nearly 45GB of root codification files, allegedly stolen by a erstwhile employee, person revealed the underpinnings of Russian tech elephantine Yandex's galore apps and services. It besides revealed cardinal ranking factors for Yandex's hunt engine, the benignant astir ne'er revealed successful public.

The "Yandex git sources" were posted arsenic a torrent record connected January 25 and amusement files seemingly taken successful July 2022 and dating backmost to February 2022. Software technologist Arseniy Shestakov claims that helium verified with existent and erstwhile Yandex employees that immoderate archives "for definite incorporate modern root codification for institution services." Yandex told information blog BleepingComputer that "Yandex was not hacked" and that the leak came from a erstwhile employee. Yandex stated that it did not "see immoderate menace to idiosyncratic information oregon level performance."

The files notably day to February 2022, erstwhile Russia began a full-scale penetration of Ukraine. A erstwhile enforcement astatine Yandex told BleepingComputer that the leak was "political" and noted that the erstwhile worker had not tried to merchantability the codification to Yandex competitors. Anti-spam codification was besides not leaked.

While it's not wide whether determination are information oregon structural implications of Yandex's root codification revelation, the leak of 1,922 ranking factors successful Yandex's hunt algorithm is surely making waves. SEO advisor Martin MacDonald described the hack connected Twitter arsenic "probably the astir absorbing happening to person happened successful SEO successful years" (as noted by Search Engine Land). In a thread detailing immoderate of the much notable factors, researcher Alex Buraks suggests that "there is simply a batch of utile accusation for Google SEO arsenic well."

Yandex, the fourth-ranked hunt motor by volume, purportedly employs respective ex-Google employees. Yandex tracks galore of Google's ranking factors, identifiable successful its code, and competes heavy with Google. Google's Russian part precocious filed for bankruptcy after losing its slope accounts and outgo services. Buraks notes that the archetypal origin successful Yandex's database of ranking factors is "PAGE_RANK," which is seemingly tied to the foundational algorithm created by Google's co-founders.

As elaborate by Buraks (in two threads), Yandex's motor favors pages that:

• Aren't excessively old
• Have a batch of integrated postulation (unique visitors) and little search-driven traffic
• Have less numbers and slashes successful their URL
• Have optimized codification alternatively than "hard pessimization," with a "PR=0"
• Are hosted connected reliable servers
• Happen to beryllium Wikipedia pages oregon are linked from Wikipedia
• Are hosted oregon linked from higher-level pages connected a domain
• Have keywords successful their URL (up to three)

You tin hunt and click done each the factors connected Rob Ousbey's compiled hunt tool. You mightiness announcement that astir 1,000 of the ranking factors person the tag "TG_DEPRECATED," and much than 200 are listed arsenic "TG_UNUSED." Because the codification is from February 2022 and was grabbed successful July 2022, Yandex's hunt has surely changed since. But the leak provides a uncommon look into however hunt rankings are enactment unneurotic astatine a tract that services 1 of the world's largest countries.

Yandex antecedently saw its hunt motor codification locomotion retired the doorway successful 2015, erstwhile a erstwhile worker tried to merchantability it connected the achromatic marketplace for $28,000 to money his ain startup. The amazingly debased fig for the halfway codification of Yandex's main merchandise suggested helium was unaware of its existent value. That worker was sentenced to a suspended 2 years successful prison, and the codification was ne'er seen publicly.