It is probably no surprise to hear that Yandex is the 4th most popular search engine across the globe. However, there was a leak of Yandex’s proprietary source code yesterday. This is the alleged second major data leak that the company has suffered in less than a decade, arguably the biggest in many years. There was also some news that Yandex’s secret search engine code was offered for sale on the black market in 2015 by a former Yandex employee.
Alex Braaks, an SEO expert, has studied the information and made a file available online that provides further explanations about this leak. The study concluded that Google’s algorithm should have been the leading factor in 1922, according to few analysis.
Initially, this leak only contained the kernel file, but after the SEO community dug deeper, they discovered approximately about 17,800 ranking factors. Since Yandex and its products are often targeted by cybercriminals, the incident shouldn’t be surprising
Also, Yandex and Google share many similarities, such as the use of PageRank. It is also important to note that many text algorithms are similar. The list goes on and on. Many current Google employees have found work at Yandex due to its apparent intent to mimic the search giant. Hence, both platforms produce similar search results about 70% of the time. In recent years, Yandex has adopted machine learning, like Google, and has always updated its algorithm as well. It is believed that a rogue employee was responsible for the leak and that the data leak was politically motivated.
