This SEO Tool Released 'Yep', A Search Engine That Can Provide Something Google Cannot

Yep search engine by Ahrefs

The web is big, and it's still growing. With its many pages and links, the web's network is getting even more complex as things get more intertwining.

While Google is the most popular search engines, that doesn't mean it's alone in the business. And when no other search engine is able to come close in terms of usage, that doesn't mean that the business lacks competition. Once in a while, a new kid on the block will show up.

And this time, it's called 'Yep.'

The search engine is created by Ahrefs, a popular SEO tool for many website owners, SEO specialists and internet marketers.

Dmytro Gerasymenko, the CEO of Ahrefs, was the one who made the initial announcement about creating a new search engine in the year 2019 on Twitter.

This time, the company finally delivers.

Yep.com has been under development for around a couple of years, before Ahrefs finally released it in beta.

The search engine that is initially available in English and Russian language, was built using Ahrefs's massive data and resources.

After all, Ahrefs has long been building its database of websites and their web pages since 2010, including indexing their links and where they are linked to, as well as ranking that many web pages using its own algorithms.

In short, Yep's database was built using whatever Ahrefs' crawling bot has been exposed to.

But according to Ahrefs, the company wants to replace the bot with Yep's own bot.

As a result of this, Yep is a general-purpose search engine that is built independently from Google or Bing, or any others for that matter.

To promote Yep, Ahrefs is providing some benefits over its competitors.

For example, Yep is contributing 90% of its revenue to content creators, whereas Google only gives around 70% of its revenue to content creators. Then, Ahrefs also said that Yep doesn't data about users' queries, IP addresses, locations and so forth, and doesn't share any user data to third-parties.

"We offer an unbiased, private search experience that rewards and compensates the makers behind the content. To do this, we use a 90/10 revenue share business model where we pay 90% of advertising revenue directly to these makers," explained Yep on its About page. "Simply put, when you use Yep, you’re directly putting money in the pockets of your favorite content creators."

It's worth noting through, that Yep's privacy policy page mentioned that policies can be modified at any time.

Yep search Google
Searching for "Google" on Yep.

According to Dmytro Gerasymenko, CEO of Ahrefs:

"We want to offer a search engine that provides privacy for users and profit-share for content creators as a monetization opportunity. Creators who make search results possible deserve to receive payments for their work."

Ahrefs is by no means, a capable company to compete with Google in the search engine business it has been doing since 1998. What's more, Ahrefs may never be able to replace Google as the internet's most dominant company.

However, Ahrefs built Yep based on two assumptions: the economics of the web are broken, and that the situation cannot be solved by Google.

First of, the web is biased. Anyone who is accustomed to the way the web works, in which contents are tailored differently to different people, should already know this. Second, Yep wants to balance he compensation by giving more to content creators.

Ahrefs believes that by giving more to content creators, they will in turn make contents that are higher in quality.

Increasing content creators' income would also open the doors to a range of niche content types that are not currently viable, Gerasymenko said.

Whereas under Google's control, “it’s almost as if the back-of-the-book index has become more valuable than the book itself,” said Ahrefs.

"We realized that the internet is missing a big chunk of content that could have been created if Google had been sharing advertising revenue with creators."

Yep 90%
Yep promises 90% revenue share, a percentage that is a lot more than Google can ever provide to content creators.

As one of the biggest SEO tools the web has, Ahrefs may already own some of the necessary infrastructure to properly run a search engine that is independent from Google.

But to ever compete directly with Google, or to even take an insignificant portion of Google's pie, Yep needs to ensure that it has a viable business model, and that it can really deliver its promise to content creators.

Google is undeniably the ruler in the search engine business, and has forged its throne over the years with other products that also include Android operating system to Chrome web browser.

Even if Ahref's Yep is able to eat away Google's market share, Google that has no intention to be dethroned by anyone or anything, has the capacity, influence, and the resources to unleash everything it has to keep competitors at bay.

For Ahrefs, it has another problem it has to deal with. And that is Yep's business model that doesn't bond well with Ahrefs' business model.

For all this time, Ahrefs provides website owners improve their Google Search rankings. By competing with Google, Ahrefs must promote Yep and not Google. And this is like biting the hand that feeds it.

Regardless, it remains a challenge for Ahrefs, simply because Yep is yet to earn its first dollar in advertising revenue. At this time, Ahrefs' spokesperson said that Yep's focus is improving search results to a level that is "satisfactory in terms of our estimates of quality."

"Right now our algorithm works well for short queries, but we still have to improve longer queries. We also want to have images, news and video," added Gerasymenko.

"The project itself is difficult; there are just a few companies that really do search algorithms. Most get results from Bing or Google, but what we’re doing is indexing the information ourselves, which is difficult and takes time."

Published: 
09/08/2022