How Yandex.Metrica sells to your competitors "generalized statistical information" of your site

    Everyone has already encountered that the search engine request is stored in your user preferences and then “used against you” - advertising on this request will haunt you all over the Internet for a long time.

    But today I was puzzled by the advertisement that Yandex showed on Yandex.Weather - on the one hand I’m familiar with the topic (this is the business of the client whose site we work with), but on the other hand, I realized that I had never looked for this topic in Yandex. A suspicion crept into my head, which I checked.

    In the incognito mode of the browser, I opened the client’s site, and then the Yandex.Weather site. At first, the advertisement did not start, but after 30 seconds I got what I was looking for - five ads from our client’s competitors. Information about my visit “leaked” through Yandex.Metrica and the theme of the site was recorded in my user preferences. I checked on other topics - the result is similar.

    It turns out the following situation. You can spend a lot of effort and money to attract people to the site, and it can even be offline events - dating at an exhibition, outdoor advertising or a person visiting a company salon. Or it can be an online advertisement that has nothing to do with Yandex - for example, Google.Edwards.

    So a visitor came to your site (without Yandex), got the information and went to think. And here the “kind” Yandex decides to “help” your business and starts actively and everywhere to show this person the ads of your competitors. And this is based on the fact that you used the statistics service from Yandex.

    Is it legal? Yes, you agree to clause number 11 of the terms of use of Yandex.Metrica . Is it ethical? Each will have its own answer.

    Actions to repeat the experiment:

    1. If you are the owner of a site with a competitive theme and use Yandex.Metrica, then start with the fourth paragraph.
    2. Open Google results (for reliability) on any competitive subject - air conditioners, office partitions, pallet racks, etc. If you are from the regions, add “Moscow” to the query, so that there are likely to be large sites to which Yandex algorithms have assigned themes.
    3. Find a site that has Yandex.Metrica - in fact, it costs almost everyone. Open the source code (Ctrl + U), and then try to search (Ctrl + F) for the line mc.yandex.ru.
    4. Open the browser tab in incognito mode and go to the found site.
    5. Then (after about 30 seconds) in the same "incognito" mode, go to the site pogoda.yandex.ru, where Yandex.Direct advertising is displayed on the right.


    PS There is a timid hope that a setting will appear in Yandex.Metrica that allows you to refuse to use your statistics in the formation of user preferences of visitors.

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