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:

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+.