SEARCHENGINES
Yandex Search Ranking Factors Leaked & Exposed
Yandex had a boatload of its source code across all its technology allegedly leaked by a disgruntled employee and part of that was the source code for Russia’s largest search engine – Yandex. As you can imagine, SEOs and others are diving in and seeing what they can learn from the source code.
I personally did not download the source code, so I did not go through it myself but I wanted to share what people did find via Twitter from their investigations of the source code.
Here’s the alpha version of an explorer tool for the leaked #Yandex Search code.
It lets you browse through the ranking factors, view by tags, etc, and start to find connections.
Easy to add new features if there’s anything you want to see!https://t.co/AjbYnrDl9P pic.twitter.com/pQ4scOkP6w
— Rob Ousbey : @[email protected] (@RobOusbey) January 28, 2023
I downloaded the code, analyzed it and there is a lot of useful information for Google SEO as well. pic.twitter.com/RWrgnnlpj6
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
Theoretically, what is the difference between algorithms used in Google and in Yandex?
They are quite similar:
– there is RankBrain analogue – MatrixNet;
– they are using PageRank (almost the same as in Google);
– a lot of text algorithms are the same. pic.twitter.com/Djjl8Bmjwn— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
According to Statcounter Yandex is close to Yahoo and Bing by market share: pic.twitter.com/5GKIvKIvAo
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
Main insights after analysing this list:
#1 Age of links is a ranking factor. pic.twitter.com/U47uWvEq9w
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
#3 Numbers in URLs is bad for rankings pic.twitter.com/ECgwGeGUfb
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
#5 Hard pessimization equal PR=0 pic.twitter.com/RRbhuJyZr1
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
#7 Fun fact – there is a separate ranking factor for uplifting Wikipedia pic.twitter.com/799F8KFpkE
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
#9 Document age and last update both are ranking factors. pic.twitter.com/ay1GTMVEtJ
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
Right now I checked ~40% of the list, there are a lot more (about text relevancy, behaivor factors, page rank, internal links,etc).
Will continue this thread after some time.
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023
The first thread got a lot of impressions (500k views for the moment, thanks for you retweets and likes!), so I decided to finalize.https://t.co/UQiQsnpWd2
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#2 Additionnaly: ranking factor for orphan pages.
You can easy find them via Screming Frog or other crawlers. pic.twitter.com/zIPwAelpD0
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#4 Number of search queries of your site/url is a ranking factor.
Obviously more = better. pic.twitter.com/xXQ6FMDghP
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#6 If your url whould be the last for search session (user will find what he needs) – it whould impact rankings.
There are strict factors for this and predictible factors as well. pic.twitter.com/Zx3sBZORCs
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#8 Special ranking factors for short videos (tiktok, shorts, reels) pic.twitter.com/oKPzL09MID
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#10 Keywords in URL is a ranking factors.
As we can see from the description – the optimal would be include up to 3 words from the search query. pic.twitter.com/Q1euKWSiST
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#14 One more ranking factor for content quality – broken embedded video on the page.
Embed videos – good for rankings.
Broken embed videos – bad. pic.twitter.com/2SUys65PHp— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#16 If you backlinks anchors contain all words from the keywords – it’s good for SEO.
If it is in a one link – it’s more beneficial. Especially if the order of words is the same. pic.twitter.com/WrbESJ8Da5
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#18 The quality rank of texts on the domain is a ranking factor.
Pages with low quality content affect the entire domain. pic.twitter.com/MJUCTVB9CH
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#20 Funny, there is a random as a separate ranking factor.
When you don’t understant why some of page is on top – it could be just random (to test behaivor factors). pic.twitter.com/TGtzFrmBOV
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
#22 Backlinks from the top 100 best websites by PageRank impacts on rankings.
That’s not news. pic.twitter.com/ikxldWLJqy
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
Wow, I just found the list with initial weights of Yandex ranking factors.
Do you need one more thread? 😁
P.S. final weights calculated by AI (matrixnet), but initial values are useful as well. pic.twitter.com/WeroYQy7Yu
— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 28, 2023
That said, I’ve been digging into the codebase myself to find things of interest.
I’m doing this live, so I don’t know how long it will take between tweets.
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
A lot of the code related to Yandex Search lives in the Kernel, ExtSearch, Search, and Robot archives, but again I won’t be able to be comprehensive here until I’ve looked through everything.
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
Some really interesting things in the web_meta_factors_info/factors_gen.in file as it relates to content features and factors.
For instance, some things that we’d expect like a minimum expectation of the proximity of words in a title to the words in the query. pic.twitter.com/YRsrCpVsqU
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
Interestingly, there are a lot of scrapers in here Google News, Shopping, YouTube and even other Yandex services.
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
Hmm…this might be the structure of how Yandex stores documents in their version of a doc server.
Still looking for an idea of how they structure their inverted index. pic.twitter.com/1lwTbOirnx
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
Here’s a protobuf of link factors. pic.twitter.com/1RM6o1xzRg
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
In the “link prioritizer code” they talk about decreasing the priority of links with the same text from the same host. In other words, don’t count the links from duplicate content. pic.twitter.com/dQTUnScCUy
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 27, 2023
How did y’all come up with that number of ranking factors?
I see 481 factors just related to “Rapid Clicks” pic.twitter.com/sw5A3ia3Bk
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 28, 2023
Similar to the Googs, Yandex has multiple ranking models to choose from.
In this select_ranking_models.cpp file, they talk about having different models for different languages and locations. pic.twitter.com/m210tpOUDb
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 28, 2023
I’m gonna go watch TV, but I obviously have to add this to my book so I’m gonna add more over the next couple days
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 28, 2023
Been digging into how this robot archive is structured.
It looks like the Zora directory is where a lot of interesting things are happening. There’s a limits.pb.txt file that stores the requests per second rate for the host and the IP address for 204k hosts. pic.twitter.com/0oulKm58dx
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 28, 2023
Here’s where the Document and Query factors are collected and scored.
Looks like it goes to storage after this tho. pic.twitter.com/qJAiLfSrsU
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 29, 2023
Ok, real quick, top 5 most positively and negatively weighted ranking factors and their coefficients in the initial weighting in Yandex’s document relevance calculation. Negatives first
#1 FI_ADV: -0.2509284637
This factor determines that there is advertising on the site.
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 29, 2023
#3 FI_QURL_STAT_POWER: -0.1943768768
Factor is the number of URL impressions for the request
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 29, 2023
#5 FI_GEO_CITY_URL_REGION_COUNTRY: -0.168645758
Factor is the geographical coincidence of the document and the country that the user searched from.
Ok, now for the top 5 positively weighted factors.
— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 29, 2023
Here is a starting point for link related factors.https://t.co/fwP8TxuOrM
— Christoph C. Cemper 🇺🇦 🧡 SEO (@cemper) January 30, 2023
Will this help you do SEO on Google? Probably not but hey, it is super interesting.
Ah, but once they find the optimal word count …
BOOM
— John Mueller is watching out for Google+ 🐀 (@JohnMu) January 29, 2023
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
SEARCHENGINES
DOJ May Breakup Google, Ranking Volatility, Quick View Theft, Google Web Creator Event, Google Ads & More Search News
For the original iTunes version, click here.
Google may be forced to breakup, the DOJ is leaning towards forcing that and more as a remedy to its monopoly ruling. This morning we are seeing a spike in Google Search ranking volatility. Google is testing quick view, where it just takes recipe blogger content and hosts it on its site. Google is hosting a web creator conversion event to appeal to publishers who got hit by its algorithms, Google launched ads in AI Overviews, new link format, AI organized search results and more. Google seems not to link HCU hit sites in the AI Overviews. Google spoke about what it means to have an unreachable robots.txt file. Google is testing verified labels also for retailers in the shopping and product view. Google Store ratings are rolling out to more countries. Google is testing a new list articles view for listicles. Google is testing people also are saying in short video format. Google is testing most mentioned places. Google Shopping tests researched with AI. Google is testing variations of sponsored labels for search ads. Google is showing competitor ads in your local business profile reviews. Google Merchant Center listings adds new certification markup. Google now lets you drag and drop your restaurant menu items in Google Business Profiles. Google added a negative keywords tab to Keyword Planner. Google Ads improved its sidebar navigation. Google may have 9,000 new ad campaigns made every second. Google Merchant Center added video generation and Amazon MCF integration. Bing is testing best list of carousels, which is dangerous. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Sponsored by Similarweb, the all-in-one- strategic SEO software. Get clarity of the SEO landscape through competitor analysis, keyword research, rank tracking, SERP insights and more. With industry-leading traffic and keyword data, based on real user journeys, Similarweb gives SEO professionals the whole picture so they can strategize smartly and drive sustainable business growth.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Search Topics of Discussion:
Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 11, 2024
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
We are seeing more signs of intense Google Search ranking volatility. Google is now showing sites hit by HCU or core updates in the AI Overview links/citations. Google Search is missing the video tab in search for some users. Google spoke about when your robots.txt is unavailable. Google added edit and delete buttons next to your reviews. Bing is testing “best list of” carousels in search. And I posted the SEO video recap this morning.
Tonight is Yom Kippur – which those who observe the holiday an easy and meaningful fast. Also, if I have upset anyone in any way with something I’ve posted here or said or written, I hope you can accept my apology. I will try to do better next year.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
-
Google Search Ranking Volatility Rumbling Again October 10th
Can you believe it, it has been over a week since I reported on any Google Search ranking algorithm updates or volatility. Over the past 24-hours or so, the level of chatter have spiked, along with many of the third-party Google Search ranking tracking tools. -
Google AI Overviews Not Linking To Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update
Google’s AI Overviews seem to not show citations or link to sites that were hit by the helpful content update (and probably core updates), even when you ask the AI Overview directly about that site and even if that site is ranking well for that query in the traditional Google search results. -
Google Search Missing Video Tab For Some Users – Bug?
Google Search seems to be missing the video tab under the search bar for some searchers. I suspect this is some sort of weird bug, there is no way in my mind that Google will do away with the ability to search for videos. -
Google: Robots.txt Is Unreachable, Other Pages Reachability Matter
There is this interesting conversation on LinkedIn around a robots.txt serves a 503 for two months and the rest of the site is available. Gary Illyes from Google said that when other pages on the site are reachable and available, that makes a big difference, but when those other pages are not, then “you’re out of luck,” he wrote. -
Bing Tests Best List Of Carousel
Microsoft is testing a new Bing Search carousel titled “Best list of X.” It can be the best list of PPC agencies or other queries that Bing wants to show you the best list of. -
Google Adds Edit & Delete Button Links To Your Reviews
Google has added an edit and delete button link next to the reviews you added to a Google Business Profile listing. This gives the reviewer a quicker method to modify or remove the review they left for a business. -
Google 5k Run
Here is a video I found on Instagram of a 5k run at Google. This is called the Global Google 5k Run. I embed the video below. -
Search News Buzz Video Recap: DOJ May Breakup Google, Ranking Volatility, Quick View Theft, Google Web Creator Event, Google Ads & More Search News
Google may be forced to breakup, the DOJ is leaning towards forcing that and more as a remedy to its monopoly ruling. This morning we are seeing a spike in Google Search ranking volatility. Google is testing quick view, where….
Other Great Search Threads:
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 10, 2024
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google Local Service Ads will require advertisers to have a Google Business Profile next month. Google is testing a Quick view button in search that gives searchers no reason to look at your site. Google may have 9,000 ad campaigns created every second. Google is testing verified labels for retailers in the product search results. Google is expanding store ratings to more countries.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
-
Google Tests Quick View Button For Recipes That Keep You On Google
Google is testing placing a “quick view” button overlayed on the images on recipes within Google Search. The crazy part is that clicking on “Quick view” keeps you on Google while giving you a snapshot of the content from the publisher, without sending that traffic to the publisher. -
Google Local Service Ads To Soon Require Google Business Profile
Google will soon require businesses who want to advertise using Google Local Service Ads to also have a Google Business Profile. Google posted a notice that reads, “By Thursday, November 21, 2024, your Local Services ad will need a matching Google Business Profile to continue appearing in search results and to display your customer reviews.” -
9,000 Google Ads Campaigns Created Every Second???
Thomas Eccel posted a guess, trying to figure out how many Google Ads campaigns are created in a timeframe. He said if the ad campaigns are issued in sequential order, based on his calculations, 9,000 ad campaigns are created on Google Ads every second. -
Google Search Tests Verified Labels For Product Results
Back in August we reported that Google was testing showing verified badges, verification labels, in the organic search results. Well, now Google is testing the verified label on the detailed product results overlay, on retailer listings. -
Google Store Ratings Now Available In India, Australia, Canada & UK
Google is rolling out the Store ratings feature beyond US Search. It is rolling out to searchers in Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom. Although, we’ve seen examples of Google showing them in Australia and other countries over the years, I guess as a test. -
Google Noogler Bison Again
We have a photo of this Google Bison from 2018. It looks to be in the same condition but moved from its previous location. It also looks angry…
Other Great Search Threads:
- We’re now seeing AI Overviews appearing for non signed-in users in the UK, ZA, NZ, SG, KE – well countries where English is commonly spoken., Authoritas on X
- I’m sure it’ll be a great event! Unfortunately, I’m only able to make it virtually this time :-/. Martin’s there though, he’s pretty cool too!, John Mueller on LinkedIn
- That’s a fantastic question and right upfront: I don’t have an answer, but I have an idea., Martin Splitt on LinkedIn
- You know how sometimes you’re certain you had a good reason to do something, later on forget why, but continue doing it just in case there’s still a good reason? That’s why. 🙂, John Mueller on Mastodon
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
-
SEO7 days ago
Google’s AI Overviews Avoid Political Content, New Data Shows
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Shopping Researched with AI
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
8 Best Banks for ECommerce Businesses in 2024
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING5 days ago
How to Choose Your Battles Wisely at Work
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Google Showing Competitor Ads Above Local Reviews
-
WORDPRESS4 days ago
The Market Dominance and Technological Advantages That Make WordPress Nearly Irreplaceable as a CMS
-
SEO6 days ago
Best Practices For Keyword Localization
You must be logged in to post a comment Login