As part of the modern SEO research track, Mikhail Volovich and Olga Yudina, both of Ashmanov & Partners, gave a presentation on the research they have compiled analyzing the ranking factors for both Yandex and Google, and highlighting their differences.
The key takeaways from their presentation are:
- The ranking factors identified in 2019 remained relevant to 2020.
- The effect of links within Yandex appears to have lessened, whereas it has remained the same within Google.
- Perceived website (and business) quality has become a much stronger factor in both Google and Yandex.
- On mobile, site speed appears to be more important to Google than Yandex, but in Yandex the number of Turbo pages has increased greatly (outside of the top 3 results).
They also predict, based on observed data that both Google and Yandex will add more weight to establishing website quality (EAT & IKS), and mobile search will see an increase in both AMP and Turbo pages.
