In late March, the FBI told McClatchy they were investigating ‘right wing’ websites such as Breitbart and InfoWars as part of their investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. At the same time, questions began to arise among researchers crowdsourcing information on Twitter about a Yandex verification meta tag discovered on Breitbart’s website. Yandex is Russia’s premiere search engine and internet-related product provider, sometimes referred to as ‘the Google of Russia.’ These tools could be used to build a powerful relationship between a Russian audience, Russian advertisers, and Breitbart.com. Since then, many theories and questions have arisen about the purpose and use of this meta-tag from plausible to bizarre.

The purpose of adding the “yandex-verification” identification code meta tag is to allow the owner of a website to prove their ownership to Yandex, giving the owner access to analytic software, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and advertising products. Yandex is not currently commonly used outside of Russia and Eastern European states.

Though Breitbart.ru is a registered domain and Breitbart News may have plans to eventually expand its brand into Russia, there is currently no public evidence to show Breitbart.com has reached out to audiences in Russia through Yandex services. Are any other western media websites registered for Yandex analytics? A manual search through metadata for popular western media websites might suggest the answer is no, except for maybe one site.

The Yandex meta tag was added to the Breitbart News website between March 30th and March 31st, 2016, at the height of Republican nomination campaigns. Though it is unclear why it was added at this time, Daily Mail added the Yandex verification code to their DNS record no later than August, 2014. What is the correlation? Perhaps nothing other than both companies deciding to register their sites with Yandex to explore its analytic tools.

Still curious, I wondered what other connection Breitbart and Daily Mail might have that were uncommon for major western media websites and it didn’t take long to find one: Taboola, an Israeli advertising company based in New York and R&D in Tel Aviv.