How we fought Yandex’s “Multi-armed Bandits” and won

What are these very “bandits” can be found in the publication of Yandex at the conference in Italy (there is a translation ).

Why did this algorithm appear? The lack of a positive user experience for the new site means that there is simply nothing to use for ranking a resource outside of the 10s from the point of view of the authors of “multi-armed bandits” in the absence of links. As a result, we have a "stagnation" when the market and products change with the needs of customers, while the top remains unchanged.

As a result, the quality of search results decreases. The algorithm, which has been working for more than two years now, gives a chance to new sites and puts them in the top. This allows you to collect user experience and make a difference. But! It does not yet give any chance for optimizers to somehow influence the “random” issue.
')
In order not to worsen the quality of the issue in the long term, the search engine does this in portions. Therefore, you can notice the daily changes in search results, and the improvements appear gradually, without spoiling the main picture.

No need to think that Yandex is ahead of the rest. Experiments on the impact on user experience in the search results are in the video of Rand Fishkin, where he shows the results of his experiment with Google.



I will share with you today a case study that illustrates a confident victory in a fight with “multi-armed gangsters”. This is not about spam or cheating. This is what and how it works now. And I really hope this battle will become a precursor to the emergence of a new white hat optimization technology.

Case

In April 2017, the SEO Marathon was held, in which about 600 people from different cities of Russia and the CIS participated.

During the answers to the questions, we talked about hidden ranking factors in Yandex, with a request to demonstrate a lively and fresh case. The speaker jokingly offered to bring one of the listeners to the top 3 site on any request. An online software store ( https://softmap.ru ) was proposed, and a request that cannot be positioned in the top3 by the efforts of the optimizer.

Evgeny Smirnov suggested the listeners: go to Yandex from a mobile phone, find the specified online store for the selected request, view 2-3 pages, including contacts and copy the phone to the clipboard.

The task was performed by 40 listeners of the webinar, a few more after viewing its recording. Here I will clarify that the region established by the Soft Map company in J.Webmaster is Moscow, and mainly residents of other regions and even foreign countries participated in the webinar.

Within 2 hours after the experiment, the site moved to the 3rd position, and then to the first. We caught a “thug”.


Sites in the top Yandex at the request “buy archicad”

No other actions were performed, and the online store itself is still firmly in the top3 SERP:


Sites in the top Yandex at the request “buy archicad”

Traffic by phrase:


Screenshot from Ya. Metrics


Search traffic for the phrase “buy archicad” broken down by region

Think about the difference with the classical optimization, when the first results can actually be obtained in 2-3 weeks (and the companies indicate a month or two in the KP), and even then, it is often just “about the positive dynamics”!



And then - just a couple of hours, and you are “on horseback”. And for a long time! It seems that in the near future we are waiting for significant changes in this area.

What practice examples can you share? Do you need more publications on Habré about “multi-armed bandits” and how they can be used in working with your site?