Massive Yandex code leak reveals Russian search engine’s ranking factors - Ars Technica

Nearly 45GB of source code files, allegedly stolen by a former employee, have revealed the underpinnings of Russian tech giant Yandex's many apps and services.

Software engineer Arseniy Shestakov claims that he verified with current and former Yandex employees that some archives "for sure contain modern source code for company services."

Aren't too old Have a lot of organic traffic (unique visitors) and less search-driven traffic Have fewer numbers and slashes in their URL Have optimized code rather than "hard pessimization," with a "PR=0" Are hosted on reliable servers Happen to be Wikipedia pages or are linked from Wikipedia Are hosted or linked from higher-level pages on a domain Have keywords in their URL (up to three)

But the leak provides a rare look into how search rankings are put together at a site that services one of the world's largest countries.

Yandex previously saw its search engine code walk out the door in 2015, when a former employee tried to sell it on the black market for $28,000 to fund his own startup.

The surprisingly low figure for the core code of Yandex's main product suggested he was unaware of its real value.