Yandex Code Leak

It’s been an interesting weekend with the news of the Yandex code leak. Many will never have heard of Yandex, but it is like the Google of Russia. Although Google has a presence in Russia, Yandex is bigger and more widely used than Google. The leak, not a hack, according to Yandex, was allegedly carried out by an ex-employee. The code is complete and covers all of Yandex’s products, including their search engine.

SEOs have been very excited over the last couple of days ploughing through the 1922 rankings factors listed in the leaked documents. It is important to note that many of the factors may be negative ranking factors. Although Yandex is not Google, and the way the two search engines rank websites will be different, there will inevitably be some crossover between the two. It’s worth having a look through the list, but appreciate that the application of the factors isn’t clear. From the list, there are some big surprises although one shouldn’t surprise anyone: Ukrainian websites are automatically applied a negative ranking signal. Sigh!

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