SEO Tool Ahrefs Invests $60M to Launch a Search Engine, Yep

SEO Tool Ahrefs Invests $60M to Launch a Search Engine, Yep

Ahrefs has announced that they are launching their own search engine called "Yep", plowing $60 million of their own resources into the project aimed to compete with Google and Bing. Over 50,000 SEO consultants and agencies use Ahrefs suite of SEO tools, generating $100M+ annual revenues.

Yep's Unique Value Proposition

Yep has a unique value proposition with a 90/10 revenue split in favor of content creators — if content creators start getting a ton of traffic from Yep, they will be paid 90% of their site's ad revenue.

Development History

Ahrefs first announced they were working on Yep in March 2019. This new search engine is the brainchild of Ahrefs CEO, Dmitry Gerasimenko. According to TechCrunch, a team of 11 have been developing this since 2019, with Gerasimenko actively involved in the project from the start.

Technical Foundation

Ahrefs is building this with 12 years worth of 24/7 live data from websites and backlinks — petabytes of information — as the foundations. One of their tools, AhrefsBot, visits and stores data from 8 billion websites every 24 hours.

What This Means for SEOs

The launch of Yep represents a significant shift in the search landscape, with a major SEO tool company leveraging its data infrastructure to challenge the dominance of Google and Bing.