Yandex Source Code Leak and what it means for SEO pt.2 — Mike King // iPullRank

Mike King, Founder and Managing Director at iPullRank, talks about the Yandex source code leak. Yandex, much like Google, encompasses a vast array of services including email, maps, images, and videos, among others. As such, the recent source code leak of Yandex provides a unique opportunity to gain insight into the workings of a modern search engine by examining the codebase. Today, Mike continues the discussion on the Yandex source code leak and what it means for SEO.
About the speaker

Mike King

iPullRank

 - iPullRank

Mike is Founder and Managing Director at iPullRank

Show Notes

  • 02:32
    Yandexs ranking factors
    Its difficult to figure out how many ranking factors Yadex uses because theres a file with 1922 ranking factors in it. But theres also a series of files with that same name that contains additional ranking factors.
  • 06:01
    Yandexs ranking factors vs Googles ranking factors
    The standout features of Yandexs ranking factors include the devaluation of ads, the use of exact match domains, trust of .com domains, and the distrust of Russian domains. In addition, unlike Google, Yandex uses host rank, spam karma, and dwell time.
  • 08:20
    Yandexs approach to backlinks
    Yandex has removed links from its ranking system for commercial queries in Moscow, and page rank is the 17th highest weighted factor. Yandex's approach to links is interesting, as they have a spam calculator file and they discount links in duplicate content.
  • 11:57
    Link
    Based on the Yandex source code, there are a lot of nuances taken into account when it comes to the weighting of pages and links. Likewise, link-building is becoming more difficult as Google has a strong understanding of newly acquired links versus those that were present previously.
  • 15:46
    The implications of hard
    These factors play a crucial role in determining the consideration set of pages and scoring a page, affecting its chances of getting into the consideration set. By understanding the values and scale of these factors, you get a sense of your limitations in optimizing a page.
  • 18:41
    The anti
    If a page exceeds the limit on certain SEO practices, it may be considered over-optimized. Panda and Penguin being added to the core algorithm highlight the need for caution in SEO practices and the existence of query-independent thresholds that can impact rankings.
  • 20:16
    Yandexs use of scrape elements from Google
    In addition to Googles web results, Yandex is scraping images, YouTube, and Tik Tok. It appears to be an admission that Yandex's results are not good enough, and its likely being done for the same use case as Bing.
  • 23:19
    Mike's future plans for Yandex ranking factor insights
    Mike wants to continue to research and build a community around technical SEO to advance their understanding of the field. He wants the community to come together around new developments, patents, and open-source materials from Google

Quotes

  • "In the documentation related to MatrixNet, they say that there are 10s of 1000s of factors. So, that could be 20,000, or it could be whatever." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "Theres a file that has 1,922 ranking factors in it. The problem is that there are a series of files with the same name that have additional ranking factors in them." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "One of the things that really stood out to me was the fact that Yandex devalues ads so much. The highest weighted negative factor was, are there ads on this page?" -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "Google has explicitly said that they don't use dwell time, there's no host rank, etc. Whereas Yandex has a host rank, spam karma, and dwell time as features." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "If you go back through the history of search engines, all of them attempted to use links for some purpose. It wasn't Google that considered links first." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "Seeing Page rank be the 17th highest weighted factor there is kind of interesting because you would expect it to be a bit higher." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "What you see in the Google index isn't all they have for that page. So, if you have a link that wasn't there before, and that page is 10 years old, they can see that." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

  • "If the best technical SEOs dig into more of the new patents, white papers, talks, open source stuff that Google is putting out, we can develop an understanding as sophisticated as Google is now." -Mike King, Founder, iPullRank

About the speaker

Mike King

iPullRank

 - iPullRank

Mike is Founder and Managing Director at iPullRank

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