In March of last year, Yandex - the largest search engine in Russia - decided to drop link signals in their search ranking algorithm for certain searches done in specific commercial verticals.
Well, I guess it didn't 100% work. As I covered at Search Engine Land, Yandex said by removing links from their algorithm, it led to only a 16% reduction in the acquisition of paid links. So what is the point, SEOs were not stopping buying links so instead, they will go after paid links by demoting sites that buy links - similar to what Google does.
Atkins-Krüger at WebCertain told me:
Alexander Sadovsky – Head of Natural Search at Yandex, confirmed at the Bynet conference in Minsk Belarus today that Yandex will be changing the way links are handled in its algorithm for commercial queries in the Moscow region. He says that Yandex was disappointed with the inertia shown by the search industry, which showed only a 16% reduction in the acquisition of paid links even despite them being told that Yandex was ignoring them.In order to force the issue, Yandex has decided to give negative scores to the ‘dishonest’ practice of buying links – and to balance that will also be adding positive scores to good quality natural links.
He said, “The ranking algorithm with no links for some commercial queries we announced last year was quite successful technologically, but the market turned out to be very slow to react. SEO specialists continued to buy links through sheer habit. That was the reason we decided to make links not only neutral or positive, but also negative – and to penalise websites for paid links”.
Yandex said the links will return to the algorithm sometime next month but be aware, paid links may result in a ranking demotion.
So I guess Yandex did not give up on links just yet.
Forum discussion at Google+.
