You might have heard of Ahref and are more familiar with its search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research tool. Well, Ahref has also introduced a new search engine tool – ‘Yep.’
Yep, that is the search engine’s name.
And, while not much is known about the new search engine, it’s essential to keep tabs on it, especially since it’s created by one of the industry’s leading companies of search engine optimization experts.
So, we scoured the Internet and checked Yep’s official website to give you a brief overview of what we know so far about this new Ahrefs search engine.
What Is Yep
Yep (try it out yourself!) is an upcoming web search engine by Ahrefs, designed as a Google competitor.
Its name does not have any specific meaning, but Ahrefs chose it because it’s short and easy to remember. Its origins are in the phrase “yip-yip” used by Aang and his friends in Avatar: The Last Airbender to make their sky bison take off into the air.
Yep is a search engine with “revenue-sharing and higher privacy as core features,” said Steve Hoenig, one of Thrive’s SEO specialists and search engine optimization consultants.
Yep will soon be available in most countries and languages around the world.
It has been designed with features and capabilities that will enable users to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, offering a viable alternative to Google and its search engine marketing opportunities.
Yep is currently in its beta phase, offering us a glimpse into its potential capabilities.
Early versions of Yep allow us to type in a search query, and the engine will provide us with relevant results from across multiple sources.
When the official launch happens, there will be an announcement made about it publicly. However, the exact date isn’t known yet, and we’ll just have to wait and see what the Ahrefs team has in store for us.
But what does Yep have up its sleeve? Will it become one of the best search engine options? The answer is easy to find since Yep doesn’t keep it a secret.
The Ahrefs Search Engine Made for Content Creators
Their first and most prominent feature would be their 90/10 revenue-sharing program.
Yep will split 90% of its ad revenue with content creators while retaining 10% for itself. This would be done to encourage more high-quality content and allow them to monetize their work more effectively.
Hoenig recommends that you try out Yep as a search engine if you’re a content creator.
Yep describes its mission as “supporting good content” by offering a private search experience (more on that later!) while compensating creators and publishers behind the content displayed in their search engines.
And the reason behind this revenue model is simple: they want new kinds of businesses to appear, creating new content that hasn’t been there before, basically aiming to transform how search engine marketing works.
They cited YouTube’s revenue-sharing program as an example, where the platform provides similar opportunities to content creators.
If the creators no longer rely on sponsorships or affiliate links, they can create more freely, producing content that their audiences will love.
That means any particular type of content, like sponsored posts or reviews, won’t bind you.
Even better, the revenue-sharing program will apply to all kinds of content, regardless of its form and who created it.
The World’s Most Private Search Engine
We did not come up with that moniker. It is what Yep’s inventor and Ahrefs CEO, Dmytro Gerasymenko, calls it.
Yep has been designed with privacy in mind, claiming to be the world’s most private search engine.
And they have a good reason for claiming that.
It does not track or store user data, such as:
• Geolocation
• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Other personally-identifiable data
And since Ahrefs and Yep have their own search index, unlike other search engine options, they don’t have to rely on third-party APIs for search results.
This means that your data will not be shared with third parties, and they won’t profile your data for advertising purposes or when displaying search results.
Instead, this Ahrefs tool will only use the keywords you typed in, your browser’s language preference, and your location at the scale of the city or region based on your IP address.
If you want to change default search engine with privacy in mind, Yep could be a good option.
How Yep Works
We’ve talked about privacy and revenue sharing, but how does the Ahrefs search engine itself work? Here’s what we know so far”
1. Crawling
Yep currently crawls the web using AhrefsBot, which visits over 8 billion web pages every 24 hours. This makes AhrefsBot the second most active crawler on the web, with Google in the first place.
Ahrefs has been using AhrefsBot to power its link database and SEO insights for 12 years, but they are now temporarily using it to power their own search engine until YepBot is ready for use.
YepBot will replace this Ahrefs tool in the near future and will be specifically designed to crawl the web and generate search results for Yep.
2. The Yep TLDR Box
The Yep TLDR box is a nifty feature in Yep’s search engine that provides users with quick information pulled from Wikipedia about their search queries.
It appears at the top right of the search results page and gives users an overview of the topic they are looking for without having to click through multiple pages.
The TLDR box features a brief summary of the information about the query, as well as related topics and links that could provide further details.
Additionally, it also displays a disclaimer letting people know that the information in the box may not always be accurate and that they can give feedback if they find it useful or not.
This allows users to get a concise description of their desired topic without visiting multiple sites.
If you’re using Google as your default search engine, you may be familiar with a similar feature displaying relevant content on the right side of their results pages.
3. Indexing and Search Engine Ranking
Yep keeps their search index current and up to date, refreshing every 15-30 minutes. Their collection is increasing exponentially, with a daily inclusion of approximately 30 million web pages and 20 million retired from the index each day.
To ensure that SEO specialists and users find new content quickly, they’ve also signed on for Microsoft’s IndexNow, which alerts all the best search engine options when information has been newly published or changed.
Yep puts together a selection of queries in different languages to determine website rankings and creates a list of the top websites and URLs.
Content and link signals combined with NLP (natural language processing) and BERT models are also utilized to generate optimal search results pages for users.
If you want a high search engine ranking, your site must be equipped with an optimized title, H1s, content architecture and related anchor text, among technical SEO factors.
4. Improving Search Quality First
You won’t be seeing any Yep ads just yet, as the company is laser-focused on improving their search quality first.
They want to ensure they provide users and SEO specialists with a great experience and relevant results before they start looking into income sources such as advertising.
So, there’s no revenue to be shared with Yep just yet, but many users will undoubtedly appreciate their focus on privacy and search quality.
5. Freely Switch to Other Search Engines
Another thing that Yep allows you to do is freely switch to other search engines, such as Bing and Google.
This means that if this Ahrefs tool cannot provide the best results for your query, you won’t have to change default search engine while also being able to freely switch over to another one and find what you are looking for.
Search engine optimization experts can use this feature to explore which content still needs more optimization, at least when it comes to Yep rankings.
What Does This Mean for SEO Professionals and Businesses?
So, should you make significant moves into Yep?
Hoenig said you have to “pay attention to how much market share [Yep would] end up occupying.”
Yep is still in its infancy, with very little market share at the moment.
For businesses, keyword research services and search engine optimization experts, this could mean more competition and opportunities for visibility. However, you should not worry about optimizing for Yep as Google still dominates the search engine market share.
The best course of action is to ensure that your content and search engine marketing strategy are up-to-date and well-optimized for Google above everything else. Monitoring whether traffic comes through Yep is a great way to calibrate your search engine strategies to take Yep into account.
Get the Latest SEO Updates From Thrive
And there you have it: Everything we know and everything you need to know about Yep.
Ahrefs has evolved beyond just another keyword research tool into a full-blown search engine for creators.
Will this be the next best search engine? We have yet to find out. But one thing is for sure: Thrive’s search engine optimization consultants will keep you updated on the latest SEO news so that you can stay ahead of the game. Bookmark our blog today and make sure you get all the essential updates.
And if you need help with your search engine ranking, don’t hesitate to contact Thrive, and we’ll be happy to help you.
We have a full suite of SEO professionals to help you with keyword research services, content writing, local SEO and other optimization strategies.
Contact us today or call us at 866.908.4748 to get started!
