Ahrefs launches Yep.com, their search engine with a 90% ad share for publishers

[Ryuzaki]

Some unprofessional writer at TechCrunch released the news that Ahrefs new search engine will be called Yep. You can already visit Yep.com for more info.

I wasn’t able to spot exactly when it’ll launch (lol, it's launched, I didn't notice the search bar, it looks like a blog homepage), but there were some interesting tidbits in there.

• Ahrefs spent $60M of its own cash to build Yep.
• They make $100M a year from 50k subscribers.
• Ahrefs has yet to take on external funding from investors.
• Yep intends to only keep 10% of ad revenue and pay the rest to the sites in their index.

They mention that they’re following the YouTube model which really helped explode video content.

Word on the street is that Apple’s search engine will be having some news soon too.

 

[Boy]

Real talk, I don't know why people who practice SEO don't embrace all these new search engines more, and/or the existing alternatives to Google like Bing, DDG, Yahoo, Ecosia, etc. The less market share G has, the lower the impact when some doodoo-ass algorithm update occurs and seemingly gets rolled back.

I want to see what happens when Apple's becomes the new default for iPhones.

 

[CCarter]

I don't know why people who practice SEO don't embrace all these new search engines more,

Cause of traffic. You can optimize for these others, but at the end of the day the masses are the ones searching. The audience "Googles it".

The only potential contender is Apple in taking on Google since they've got ability to integrate into all their devices already in millions of people's hands, and will default to Apple's search instead of Google. Siri already does this to an extend.

But the others can't do anything since the masses default to Google.

You can build a better mousetrap but if no one uses it then it won't matter. That's why I'm baffled as to why Ahrefs is going down this route. How do they plan on getting grandma, to "Yep" a new Tuna Noodle Casserole recipe versus "Google" it? Do you know how hard it was just to get grandma to Google it?

There is another technology that also seems to lack the "mass adoption" puzzle piece that comes to mind...

 

[bernard]

I suppose search is large enough that even a small percentage of market share is worth a lot of money and with DuckDuckGo melting down and destroying themselves, there could be an opening for "tech savvy" types to use Yep.

 

[illmasterj]

I'm willing to bet this is just a great marketing stunt.

Does Semrush have their own search engine? Nope. Does Ahrefs have their own search engine? Yep.

To the uninitiated, this gives them more perceived expertise/insight than their competition.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Something to mention is Ecosia and all these other "save the whales, rainforests, and clean up ocean trash" search engines are literally just skinned versions of Bing. Microsoft provides the API and results pages with white labeling and pays them a tiny bit per search.

 

[secretagentdad]

Welp.
It ranks my sites a lot higher than google on average.
Sounds great to me.
How do we grow their market share.

 

[MrMedia]

What an unbelievable waste of money. They would need a marketing budget in the hundreds of millions to even make a dent.

 

[Boy]

Cause of traffic. You can optimize for these others, but at the end of the day the masses are the ones searching. The audience "Googles it".

The only potential contender is Apple in taking on Google since they've got ability to integrate into all their devices already in millions of people's hands, and will default to Apple's search instead of Google. Siri already does this to an extend.

But the others can't do anything since the masses default to Google.

You can build a better mousetrap but if no one uses it then it won't matter. That's why I'm baffled as to why Ahrefs is going down this route. How do they plan on getting grandma, to "Yep" a new Tuna Noodle Casserole recipe versus "Google" it? Do you know how hard it was just to get grandma to Google it?

There is another technology that also seems to lack the "mass adoption" puzzle piece that comes to mind...

That was aimed less at 'let's optimize for the alternative' and instead 'let's run some psyops to get more people to use something else.' Who's got Alex Jones' number?

Over the last 28 days, 87% of my organic traffic came from G. I would be thrilled if that moved down to 60%. And if Apply does make its search engine default on Apple devices, it will move down. If a segment adopts Yep, GOOD. I'm not expecting any to dethrone the king, but slowly chipping away its power benefits all of us.

 

[Darth]

My sites aren't even listed in Yep. rekt

 

[Philip J. Fry]

... my old employer's site, where I was in charge of the SEO, ranks #1 for top terms.

Let me know if you want to know how to game Yep. LOL!

 

[bernard]

I'm number 1 on Yep and 12 on Google for a main keyword lol.

I definitely should be closer to 1 than 12, that's for sure.

 

[AmicableSkipper]

And how do they give out the 90% share? Do you have to sign your website up somewhere or will this come in the future?

 

[ItsYoBuddy]

Not impressed, I don't even have any snippets on yep!

 

[Taq]

Google pays Apple $15 billion a year not to compete with them. What is Ahrefs $60 million really going to get them?

They don't have the budget to be in this game. I'm all for Apple search though. Let's hope that comes to fruition, it would be a huge safety net for publishers.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Here’s how I see it. Ahrefs already crawls, so why not store what they download and parse? And at that point, why not have a search engine? A one percent slice of the pie would be great for them.

Where I see them going wrong is comparing this to YouTube where creators are incentivized to post. That is a more one-to-one comparison to paying webmasters, but we aren’t posting our sites to Yep in the way video makers are uploading to YouTube. They need to be incentivizing searchers, not webmasters.

It’s almost like they hope salty and greedy webmasters will switch over to searching with Yep (and do what? Search and click their own sites?).

This is way more akin to what Google tried to do with Google+. Whether people realize it or not, they incentivized SEOs to be the early adopters by adding Google+ signals to the algorithm. Those that took the bait saw real, material gains from filling up that social network with our brands. Look how well that worked out. Just another tombstone in the Google graveyard next to the bottomless pit where they burn their extra money.

I’d like for this not to be the case for Ahrefs, since what they’re doing is more logical. Hopefully it can be a break even endeavor for them.

 

[Ryuzaki]

More info from SearchEngineJournal who reached out to Dmytro Gerasymenko, the CEO of Ahrefs.

• They had settled on being FairSearch.com with the goal of becoming Fair.com (fair to webmasters, I guess) but eventually got ahold of Yep.com.
• In a past article on Medium, they said Featured Snippets was a way to keep users on Google and implied Google failed to not become evil. But they intend on having more than the top 10 blue links, too, otherwise they can't compete. They want to pay webmasters though to make it fair.
• They're talking as if they'll pay out by the percentage of clicks they send and not a pay-per-click. They want it fair and square. If your site gets 5% of every click Yep sends, then you get 5% of 90% of all the ad earnings (meaning Wikipedia will clean up big time).
• They acknowledge that $60 million isn't enough to compete. It's not even in marketing, but just what they invested in a data center in Singapore. They want to build one 4x as large in the USA.
• They admit without saying it that they don't have a value-add for users, and they want to incentivize informed people with their revenue share model.
• They hope bloggers come over first (what I said above!) and then hope that bloggers will tell their readers to switch over lmao.
• If Yep can't really give you good results, they're linking out to Google and Bing's results pages so you're satisfied into setting your default homepage and search engine to Yep.
• They're not revealing any algorithm info, just "create useful content for people "

For the full details you can click the link in this post at the top.

 

[MrMedia]

This has to be meme level stupidity.
If they can’t give good results they’ll link out to Google and bing? Wut….

 

[Hanuman]

Looks like the Yep SERPs are based heavily on DR (as opposed to PageRank). My site does not even rank anywhere in the top 100 on Yep while it ranks on the front page for a lot of target keywords on Google, and even Bing.

Maybe because I have a DR of 0.9. lol

 

[Legit]

I love Ahrefs but am not a big fan of this idea.

Ahrefs currently has issues loading up, among other things.. instead of building a search engine, they should take care of what is now making money and their loyal customers.

Ever since the whole fiasco of how they've handled the pricing change, I haven't been too excited with their handling of the feedback received. I am on a legacy plan, so I am not affected, but reading their FB is eye-opening.

I am not sure if that whole horrible pricing structure is due to this search engine, but it somewhat looks like it.

That being said, I want them to succeed, but hopefully, they handle things much better than what they are currently doing.

 

[MrMedia]

Always thought they were shitty, horrible ux and weird ways of presenting data. Imagine blowing up your core business for a meme project. Surely this has to be a prank?

 

[illmasterj]

It's definitely interesting. We had to upgrade our plan with them, and as a result I'll have to radically change how I use the tool despite already paying 3-4x what I used to. I'm all for paying for use but it does feel like they're being a bit tight with their report allocations.

 

[Execute]

My worry for Ahrefs is that they're foraying into Google's territory and taking on Google directly head-on.
Meanwhile, they depend on Google for a sizeable portion of their organic traffic from where they get subscribers.

If you want to fight with an elephant, you must be ready for the repercussions when the elephant fights back.
If Google fights back by dropping their site's rankings substantially in the Serps, their organic traffic will crash and they may not be able to get as much new customers and grow.

Of course, they will still be getting their income from existing subscribers and new referrals, but their growth will be significantly stunted if their organic traffic is limited.
And their competitors like Semrush and others may overtake them eventually.

I really hope they've thought about this move really well and have a plan for dealing with that if it happens.

That said, I really wish they succeed and take some market share off the big G, because it's currently a monopoly, and a monopoly is never a good thing.
Like @Ryuzaki pointed out above, Google appears to be progressively becoming more and more "evil" and monopolistic, aiming to keep users on their site and prevent them from going to publishers sites (while using publishers content to achieve that without paying the publishers for it, which is very unfair).

I think they've stated it before that that's their ultimate aim, to have users on their site and go nowhere else, as much as possible.
All those their snippets and other fancy Serp features are designed to make that happen.
To the detriment of the publishers who provide the information on their sites.

So I really think their monopoly on search needs to be broken, and will be happy if Ahrefs contributes to making that happen.

• They admit without saying it that they don't have a value-add for users, and they want to incentivize informed people with their revenue share model.
• They hope bloggers come over first (what I said above!) and then hope that bloggers will tell their readers to switch over lmao.

@bolded,
This is actually possible I think, as bloggers are influencers and can stimulate a change if it happens on a large enough scale. By talking about it both on their blogs and their social media channels. It will take time, but can happen, and it's probably one of the best ways to induce a cultural shift from the entrenched culture of Google as default for search.

However, for that to happen, they NEED to have a value add to their search, to give bloggers something to talk about, a reason to tell their followers to use Yep.
Whether it's privacy or better accuracy or whatever (Google's accuracy in delivering results for things I search for has been really crappy in the past few years since they moved away from solely keyword-based search results to ideas-based search results, but that's a topic for another day).
Whatever the value add is, they need to get one that appeals to people. So bloggers can have something to talk about and to tell people as a reason to switch to using them.
If they get this done, then I can see this strategy actually possibly working.

So as it stands now, they've only solved one part of the equation by catering to publishers like you rightly pointed out.
They still need to solve the searchers/masses side of the equation by giving them a strong value add.

If they do this, they can succeed with this.
If they don't, then their strategy may likely fail as you've pointed out.

 

[secretagentdad]

After using this some more and trying some benchmarks.
I wanna edit my cynical first post in this thread and trip over myself apologizing for not being more respectful.
Hey preacher guys.
Have any of you actually tried using this a bit?
Its really impressive. Like for real actually try the results for important keywords.
They're handling spam re-weighting in my niche better than google does and by a country mile.
Like this is technology break through tier cuz I'm pretty sure they didnt use some manually trained cheater sub index to do this.
This isnt some bing repackaging grift. In fact they're already ahead of microsoft and Google on a bunch of really important line items. And this is running on a fraction of a percent of the compute infrastructure.......

Try it a bit more. You're blind haters.
The weird biz model might be a bit of a cringe grab for network effect lock in but this products gonna win on product quality. I've been tracking a couple of benchmark keywords, and not only have the results been good I've been watching them improve since this thread started.
How do I buy ahrefs stock. I want to buy ahrefs stock.
Selling backlink indexes to webmasters is peasant shit compared to this.
Yeah it kinda sucks they rent soaked seos to fund it but who cares. (Its kinda cringe to even be mad lol)
The search market dwarfs the information about backlinks for nerdy webmasters market.

This aint no parlor trick historic common crawl index. And its not a distraction for ahrefs, its the main course being served up by what might be the new number 1 internet indexing service by quality metrics.
Just watched them roll fresh data onto benchmark keywords I care about and hit the nail on the head.
Popularity happens over time when you kick ass. Step one is having something good enough to actually compete.

Attention Math gods at Ahrefs if you ever read this thread.
As one of the smaller "whales" that gave you 10s of thousands of dollars, I have a humble feature request for the math gods behind these indexing accomplishments in case this they read this thread. Give us "in title" and "keyword metrics" and don't price / meter it in a way that makes it useless. I'lle shill your everything everywhere and call all the haters dumb and downvote them in chats for ever and ever. Amen

 

[OnlineDopamine]

My worry for Ahrefs is that they're foraying into Google's territory and taking on Google directly head-on.
Meanwhile, they depend on Google for a sizeable portion of their organic traffic from where they get subscribers.

If you want to fight with an elephant, you must be ready for the repercussions when the elephant fights back.
If Google fights back by dropping their site's rankings substantially in the Serps, their organic traffic will crash and they may not be able to get as much new customers and grow.

Of course, they will still be getting their income from existing subscribers and new referrals, but their growth will be significantly stunted if their organic traffic is limited.
And their competitors like Semrush and others may overtake them eventually.

I really hope they've thought about this move really well and have a plan for dealing with that if it happens.

That said, I really wish they succeed and take some market share off the big G, because it's currently a monopoly, and a monopoly is never a good thing.
Like @Ryuzaki pointed out above, Google appears to be progressively becoming more and more "evil" and monopolistic, aiming to keep users on their site and prevent them from going to publishers sites (while using publishers content to achieve that without paying the publishers for it, which is very unfair).

I think they've stated it before that that's their ultimate aim, to have users on their site and go nowhere else, as much as possible.
All those their snippets and other fancy Serp features are designed to make that happen.
To the detriment of the publishers who provide the information on their sites.

So I really think their monopoly on search needs to be broken, and will be happy if Ahrefs contributes to making that happen.


@bolded,
This is actually possible I think, as bloggers are influencers and can stimulate a change if it happens on a large enough scale. By talking about it both on their blogs and their social media channels. It will take time, but can happen, and it's probably one of the best ways to induce a cultural shift from the entrenched culture of Google as default for search.

However, for that to happen, they NEED to have a value add to their search, to give bloggers something to talk about, a reason to tell their followers to use Yep.
Whether it's privacy or better accuracy or whatever (Google's accuracy in delivering results for things I search for has been really crappy in the past few years since they moved away from solely keyword-based search results to ideas-based search results, but that's a topic for another day).
Whatever the value add is, they need to get one that appeals to people. So bloggers can have something to talk about and to tell people as a reason to switch to using them.
If they get this done, then I can see this strategy actually possibly working.

So as it stands now, they've only solved one part of the equation by catering to publishers like you rightly pointed out.
They still need to solve the searchers/masses side of the equation by giving them a strong value add.

If they do this, they can succeed with this.
If they don't, then their strategy may likely fail as you've pointed out.

This will never happen. Google already has its hands full with all kinds of antitrust issues.

If Ahrefs could somewhat reliably proof that Google downranked / penalized them because they launched a competitor product, then they'd have to pay billions in fines. Possibly even change the way they display search results.

There's already two bills awaiting congress approval, which would prohibit platforms from favoring their own services.

The much likelier option is that Google simply doesn't give a fuck as it stands today. There's been rumors in the past, stating that Facebook deliberately lets Pinterest and Snapchat exist just so that they can say that they still have competition. It's, therefore, in Google's best interest that competitors like Neeva and Yep pop up..