Ahrefs search engine announcement
Update: June 3rd, 2022: SEO tool Ahrefs invests $60M in building creator-friendly search engine, ‘Yep’
So, yep: After years of rumours and speculations, the Ahrefs Search Engine is finally here: Yep.com. Even if I am a big fan of Ahrefs, I have to admit Yep is in the early stages, so another long path from there, until everything will be working like a charm. Right now, Yep It is a super beta version, just at the start of the road. The Ahrefs’s team follow a lean Start Up model, I suppose. This can be, somehow, translated into: “get the MVP out, get feedback, and improve the product.” But, anyway, I really admire their courage, starting a project like this, at this scale, knowing the World Wide context. So, I would love to send to the Ahrefs’s team a warm “Good luck!”.
2019’s article below
Have you really wonder how many Search Engines are right now active on the Online Market? Response: Thousands. Of course, you already know about a few of them. The biggest five Search Engine brands are: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask. Everybody heard at least one time about one of them, and – of course – used one of them several times – per day.
Well, Dmitry Gerasimenko, Founder and CEO of Ahrefs, one of the biggest “Online Research and Analysis” companies on the Online Market, just announced that he plans to create a new search engine, able to share 90% of the profit with the Content Creators. In several tweets, he explained the reason for his idea, revealing the plan from the first tweet: “Ahrefs is working on a general purpose search engine”.
Even if Ahrefs will not take a big part of the “cake”, the 90/10 remains a very good profit, in the scenario that a lot of Content Creators will migrate from Google to them. He also write about the User privacy of the Google’s consumers: “First one is obviously privacy and it was discussed so much that I will switch to the second one – Profit share. Google is making $100B from its Search service. Imagine they suddenly implement 90/10 profit share model sending $90B per year to publishers who create content.”, Dmitry said.
Sounds great, right? Take a look on his latest posts on his Twitter account:
Ahrefs is working on general purpose search engine to compete with Google. Sounds crazy, right?
But lets talk about two huge problems with Google which they will never want to fix:— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
First one is obviously privacy and it was discussed so much that I will switch to the second one – profit share.
Google is making $100B from its search service. Imagine they suddenly implement 90/10 profit share model sending $90B per year to publishers who create content.— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
That could have been quite a different world. Remember that banner on Wikipedia asking for donation every year? Wikipedia would probably get few billions from its content in profit share model. And could pay people who polish articles a decent salary. pic.twitter.com/D1nQJmrGU6
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who can make living by organizing knowledge. In our imaginary world websites might remove their paywalls since they get profit share from serving a good content, and it makes sense to make it convenient so people come back.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
We've seen how profit share on YouTube made a whole new industry of videomaking for living.
So why not Google would not share profit from ads within search results? The answer is the drive for profits to please investors.— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
By the way, situation is actually even worse than just taking all the profit, Google is showing scraped content on search results page more and more so that you don't even need to visit a website in many cases, which reduces content authors' opportunity to monetize. pic.twitter.com/YxFRwOGdv0
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
We see the Internet as a global effort by humankind to preserve and multiply knowledge, which is as frequently coordinated as chaotic, often driven by economic forces, often by personal impulses.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
Naturally such a vast resource, especially free, attracts countless efforts to tap into it, privatize and control access, each player pulling away their part, tearing holes in the tender fabric of this unique phenomena.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
As a countermeasure, there must be a mechanism that will make the ties stronger and self-repairing and shall keep the web strong and transparently interconnected, how it came to be. It is natural to view search engines as an attempt to bring order to the messy bazaar of the Web.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
But structure wielded upon chaos should not be rigid and containing as a glass box around a venomous serpent, but rather supporting and spreading as a scaffolding for the vine, allowing it to flourish and grow new exciting fruits for humanity to grok and cherish.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
For chaos needs structure to not get torn apart by its own internal forces, and structure needs chaos as a sampling pool of ideas to keep evolution rolling.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
Putting away the lyricism, what we plan to do is to launch a search engine with commitment to privacy and 90/10 profit share model, meaning 90% goes to content creators, leaving 10% for expenses and profit.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
If you like this idea and willing to help you should apply to our ML and development positions. We are especially interested in Rust & OCaml developers and Data Science people with practical experience in handling text or search.
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
p.s. Facebook and some other platforms could have profit share model too. A lot of opportunities for someone willing to challenge status quo. cc @durov
— Dmytro Gerasymenko (@botsbreeder) March 27, 2019
Finally, Dmitry also posted a job proposal for the willing, for the ML and Development positions, and suggested that even Facebook, or any other big Social Media could implement the 90/10, in the desire to help the Content Creators.
Every SEO guy in this World knows that Ahrefs own a huge amount of data and the idea of creating a new Search Engine is nothing impossible. The main difference between Ahrefs and the other major Search Engines is the budget (and also the infrastructure and employees), but who knows?! This time maybe well see Google facing some real competition.
As a personal opinion, I found this idea very attractive for the CC and I really hope that – someday, G or Y or MSN will send us a bigger “piece of cake”. Until then, Happy Googling!
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