I read all 1800+ leaked Yandex ranking factors and here is what I found

Goodbye ChatGPT, hello Yandex.

The source code for Yandex (a Russian search engine) leaked recently and the one question on everyone’s mind is whether we should care.

First off, let’s throw on the brakes a bit. Yandex is not Google. It’s important to take a grain of salt when reviewing anything coming out of Yandex because it’s not Google, and not necessarily indicative of how Google works.

But darn it, this was fun.

While there is a ton of poorly translated text and internal lingo that makes about half the ranking factors in the Yandex file useless, the other half is a fascinating look at how the Russian search engine operates and gives a few clues into how Google might work.

I read the entire list (as much as I could, at least) and I’m going to break down the findings in this article. The full version of this post can be found on my website, these are the quick hits.

My process for analyzing the file

I nabbed the full TXT file, wrote a python script to pull the descriptions into a CSV, and ran that CSV through Google Sheets where I could Google Translate it.

The translation is an imperfect process, but it was quick enough for me to read the file in a weekend and make as much sense of it as possible.

There are over 1800 factors in the Yandex ranking factor list, about half of them are worth talking about. Poor translations aside, there is a lot of internal lingo and references to an internal wiki that I cannot access. Still, it provided some good data to dive into.

Key takeaways

Again, take this with a grain of salt. After reviewing each Yandex ranking factor, there are three things I’d prioritize:

• Do the basics of technical optimization (have a good host, make sure your website is easy to crawl and fast)
• Create high-quality content
• Prioritize relevance and user experience

Let’s dig deeper to the specifics.

Technical performance and crawl depth

Like Google, Yandex does not want to try hard or dig deep into your website to find key pages. Based on the ranking factors it is important to:

• Have a good, reliable host so the site is accessible
• Make sure your pages load quickly
• Ensure important pages are linked from the home page
• Limit the number of levels down to a page from the home page
• Do not orphan pages

We all know we should be choosey with our hosts and that our sites should be accessible to search engine crawlers. The best way to optimize your website’s crawl depth is to have a relatively flat website structure.

Search performance

How your website performs in search results matters a lot to Yandex.

Yandex pays close attention to how websites perform in search results. It checks for things like:

• Your click-through rate from search results
• How your site performs at different times of day/days of the week
• Your average rank across keywords you rank for
• How your website stacks up against competitors ion your niche

The biggest takeaway I find from this is to target queries you can rank for. This will help your site rank more consistently, build your authority, and make it easier to rank as time goes on. Rather than chase competitive queries and spin your wheels, pick your battle wisely, and you will see your site improve in search results.

Keyword usage

Keyword usage matters, and it’s fascinating to see how.

Yandex looks for how the keyword is used along with synonyms, things like:

• Whether the keyword is explicitly used
• How often the keyword is used
• Where the keyword is used
• How synonyms are used

What’s interesting though is it’s not just a target keyword that is factored in, it’s the entire search phrase. Again, no surprise there but it’s easy as SEOs to forget that we are not targeting keywords as much as we are targeting search terms and bearing the different variations of searches around a core keyword is critical.

Word usage matters as well, Yandex pays close attention to whether “like terms” appear in the content. For example, if you have an e-commerce site Yandex will look for words like “checkout”, “add to cart”, “buy” on the page in addition to the product description.

Content quality

One of the most common factors is content quality. Yandex pays close attention to the relevance of the content to the search query, how users interact with the content, and of course, the quality of the content.

Yandex checks for things like:

• Do like words go together
• Do the titles use excessive capitalization
• The ratio of links (internal and external) to text on the page
• Whether a page is especially long and does not link anywhere
• The number of sentences
• The average length of the words in the text
• Do visitors to the page bookmark it
• Do visitors to the page come back to it
• How often do visitors come back to it within a set period
• Does the page contain offensive language, spam, or pornography
• Does the page contain pirated video content, or videos that do not load

Bad content (poorly-written, using too many links, too long, too short, or using too many difficult words) leads to a bad experience, and it is clear from this list and Google’s recent changes that search engines value experience.

Google added “Experience” to the classic EAT acronym, so this does not come as a shock. Given the amount of data Google has, I would not be surprised if Google is paying attention to how people interact with your content, how long they spend reading it, and how often they bounce off to click on something else.

Link building

No list of ranking factors would be complete without a mention of link building. As you might expect, link building comes up quite often in the Yandex list. Here are the notable factors:

• Where the links come from
• The age of the links
• The relevancy of the links (to the site and to the search term)
• The anchor text for the link

Like I have been saying, no major surprises here. Links matter, but they need to be from good websites, and they need to be relevant to your site.

How should we apply this to Google search?

I don’t feel compelled to overhaul my approach to SEO based on this exercise of reading through the Yandex list. However, I do feel compelled to continue to create a good experience for my readers through my website and content. This is yet another reminder of the drum I beat with our clients: your website is not a brochure, it is a product.

The more you can treat your website like a product to be used, rather than a dumping ground for content and links, the better your website will perform in search results. The Yandex leak shows one thing clearly: search engines value relevant content on websites that create good experiences.

If you're interested in how think about your website in a creative and unique way to stand out in search results rather than blend in, I'd love to show you my process. Fill out the form here and let's talk!