Ahrefs is one of, if not the most popular SEO tools used by websites all over the world. The tool crawls all websites on the internet so that it understands which sites are linking to other sites and then, accordingly, rates websites’ chances of ranking highly on Google. It basically does exactly what Google does so that it can help users understand better how Google works and plan their SEO strategies accordingly. The search engine optimization tool is now going to put its considerable skills to work running its own search engine called Yep, as well as helping people understand how other search engines work too.
This move from Ahrefs isn’t exactly surprising as CEO Dmytro Gerasymenko announced the plans back in 2019 and details around Yep, match that announcement pretty well. The new search engine will soon be available in all countries and across most languages. You can already check out the English version of Yep in its current basic form.
Ahrefs’s new search engine is a brand new proposition altogether, which means it in no way relies on Google or Bing APIs to get you your search results. This makes sense when you consider the skillset Ahrefs puts to work to provide its main premium subscription service.
What makes Yep different, according to Ahrefs, is that the company plans to share 90% of all ad revenues to content creators and also will respect user privacy in a way that most search engines these days, outside of DuckDuckGo, simply do not.
Talking of sharing ad revenue, Ahrefs says that if we can see a time when it is raising billions of dollars a year through search ad revenue on Yep, theoretically, billions of dollars of that revenue could end up going to sites like Wikipedia and go towards helping keep that public resource viable. That is a very interesting SEO proposition as well as a particular type of enticement for users as well. At the moment, Google will punish sites and prevent them from ranking highly in Google searches because they see sites found through Google as offering a Google user experience. There has been no mention of rewarding good behavior before though, which means it could be interesting to see how the internet’s biggest player reacts to Yep.
In terms of privacy, Yep will save certain details about searches, which is what will help power the ad revenues described above, but says it will never save personally identifiable data about searches. This means it will learn the information it can sell to advertisers, but it will never be specifically about you.
This is an interesting move from Ahrefs and we will be tracking its progress over the next few weeks, months, and years. Wikipedia has stopped accepting crypto donations so any new fundraising avenue will be good for the site. If you’re more of a privacy advocate, however, you may be interested in our guide to help you delete everything Google knows about you.
