You’ve probably heard of Yandex, which ranks as the fourth-largest search engine globally by market share. On January 30, Yandex’s confidential source code was exposed. The list of all 1922 ranking criteria employed in the search algorithm is the one that interests SEO professionals the most.
What’s in there?
A magnet link with 44.7GB of data connected to Yandex git sources was published by the leaker. In July 2022, Yandex is said to have had its files stolen. The code repositories are thought to contain Yandex’s source code as well as anti-spam rules. Numerous ranking variables, including as text relevance, PageRank, content age, freshness, etc., are included in the stolen data.
- Indexing and Search Engine Bot
- Maps – Similar to Google Maps and Street View Disk – Similar to Siri and Alexa AI assistants – Online storage for files such as Google Drive
- Uber-style taxi service is a cab.
- Direct – Ads service similar to Google Ads / Adwords Mail – Mail service similar to GMail Market – Marketplace similar to Amazon Travel – Similar to Booking.com plus tickets for buses, trains, and aeroplanes
- Yandex360 – Similar to Google Workspaces for services on your own website
- Cloud – It’s likely that not all infrastructure code was exposed.
- Pay – Payment processing similar to Stripe, but with fewer features
- Metrika – Similar to Google Analytics
And the bulk of other corporate services at least include the backend component. The largest archive, designated “frontend,” has not yet been examined. Shestakov added a few API keys, most likely used to test deployment. It was found that, The Yandex search engine prefers pages that:
- Are not overly old
- Are hosted on dependable servers
- Occur to be Wikipedia pages or are linked from Wikipedia
- Are hosted or linked from higher-level sites on a domain
- Have keywords in their URL (up to three)
Around 1,922 ranking criteria used by the search engine were exposed by the breach. Code was made available as a torrent.
Perspectives – Yandex isn’t Google
Remember that Yandex is not Google if you want to read the complete list of Yandex ranking determinants. If Yandex lists a ranking factor, it does not imply that Google would assign that signal the same weight. In actuality, Google could not employ every one of the 1,922 mentioned characteristics.
broader perspective According to Bleeping Computer, the code showed up as a torrent on a well-known hacker forum:
…the leaker uploaded a magnet link containing 44.7 GB of files they claim to be from “Yandex git sources” and were taken from the corporation in July 2022. It is claimed that, aside from anti-spam guidelines, these code repositories house the whole company’s source code.
Yandex’s response
As a leak, Yandex refers to it. Yandex was first believed to have been hacked since the code surfaced on a well-known hacker site. This is disputed by Yandex. Though, according to Ars Technica, Yandex reportedly employs a number of former Google workers. The search engine is in fierce competition with Google and keeps track of many of the ranking parameters that are visible in Google’s code.a connected to Yandex git sources was published by the leaker. In July 2022, Yandex is said to have had its files stolen. The code repositories are thought to contain Yandex’s source code as well as anti-spam rules. Numerous ranking variables, including as text relevance, PageRank, content age, freshness, etc., are included in the stolen data.
Additional aspects include host dependability, link-related issues, and end-user behaviour. Some odd ranking criteria are discovered by SEOs, including the proportion of organic traffic, the average domain ranking across inquiries, and the quantity of unique visitors.
It appears that at least the source code for all of Yandex’s key services been leaked:
- Indexing and Search Engine Bot
- Maps – Similar to Google Maps and Street View Disk – Simi
