Yep Review: Everything You Need to Know

If you’re an SEO or a blogger, you’d know about Ahrefs, one of the most popular SEO software.

But, the news is: the team behind Ahrefs has recently launched a search engine of their own, by the name of “Yep”.

And obviously, it’s going to attempt to compete with Google, the search engine that has been dominating the market for quite a while now.

However:

• Is Yep any good?
• Can it really push its way into the already saturated search engine market?
• What’s unique about it?

This Yep review is going to address all your questions.

What’s Yep Search Engine?

Yep is a search engine launched by a popular SEO company Ahrefs on the 3^rd of June 2022.

The team behind Ahrefs has been doing a great job adding features and tools to Ahrefs, though they have recently had some performance issues and PR problems.

That said, Ahrefs is still the go-to all-in-one SEO tool for many SEOs and bloggers.

Moreover, it has been around for more than a decade now, 12 years to be precise.

And according to the company, they crawl around 8 billion web pages every 24 hours.

So, when it comes to crawling the web, the Ahrefs team has more experience than most.

Right now, Yep is using AhrefsBot for its search engine service, the same bot they use to get data for their SEO tool.

Here’s what the official YepBot page has to say:

Moreover, according to Ahrefs, the company has invested $60 million in funds (they are self funded) to build the Yep search engine from the ground up.

While that seems like a huge amount, it’s probably not enough to make a dent in the search engine market… Google probably spends that on coffee filters.

Having said that, I created Legiit despite other multi-billion dollar, public corporations in the same or similar niche.

So, of course, the amount of investment isn’t the only thing that makes a venture successful.

A lot goes into creating an impactful product.

And we know for a fact that Ahrefs has been dominating the SEO tools market.

That said, only time will tell whether the new search engine from the Ahrefs team can attract enough users or not.

Yep Review: The Name

As for the name, it’s very short and leaves a lasting impression.

It’s 3 digits less than Google.

And since there’s only one syllable, it’s super easy to pronounce.

However, it does sound and look a lot like “Yelp”, a popular online review website, that could be considered a search engine of it’s own.

As of this writing, Google can’t even distinguish between the two.

So, there’s a chance people will confuse the two names.

But, to be honest, that’s not something you should be worried about as a content creator.

Let’s take a look at how Yep stands out from the rest of the competition.

The Profit-Sharing Model of Yep

Many in the SEO industry, despite being dependent upon Google, would like to see a competitor emerge.

That said, I don’t think Yep is it.

Probably the only reason for SEOs and content creators to be excited about this new search engine from Ahrefs is its profit-sharing model… and I have my doubts on that.

The main idea around the creation of Yep is to reward bloggers for their content.

The 90/10 profit-sharing model of Yep just means that 90% of the revenue generated through paid advertisement will go to content creators.

Here’s what the official page on the Yep website says:

Now, that’s something every content creator dreams of… but I don’t really understand how it will work at all, let alone make this a sustainable venture for them.

That’s not opinion either… I tried a 90/10 model similar to this with Legiit in the beginning and it just wasn’t workable.

That said, I do think their heart is in the right place. Most creators would gladly put that kind of profit in their pocket, and also keep earning from display ads on their site, and so on.

This also means that content creators won’t have to worry too much about monetizing their content through ridiculously low paying programs like Amazon.

With that worry out of the way, they can spend more time producing helpful content.

And the best thing, in theory, is that you don’t have to be an expert to earn revenue with your content on Yep.

For instance, if you’re a cook, you can get paid for sharing in-demand recipes with your audience.

Here’s how Yep’s profit-sharing model is going to work:

• An advertiser pays Yep for a click on their web page
• Someone searches that query on Yep and lands on your site
• You get paid 90% of that payment

Sounds simple, right?

But, it isn’t going to be smooth sailing for the company.

Here’s another relevant question.

Does an Average Searcher Care?

The reality is that except for bloggers and webmasters, most people won’t care.

An average Joe is just looking for helpful information.

They don’t care if a search engine is rewarding a content creator for their efforts.

Unless, of course, they’re influencers and already have a sizeable following.

Content creators have a strong reason to shift to Yep, whatever that means in the future.

But, they are a small portion of a typical search engine audience.

Other people just won’t have enough motivation to use Yep.

This is a mistake I see with a lot of tech startup platforms… focus too much on the content provider, and not enough on the customer. I think it is a product of being in the “Make Money Online” space.

And so, we don’t know if enough people are actually going to replace Google with Yep as their go-to search engine.

But it could find a niche for itself.

How’s Yep’s Privacy Policy Different?

In addition to the revenue model, another thing that makes Yep stand out is its privacy-focused approach.

It claims to protect your personal information.

Plus, your data won’t be shared with any third party.

And although you can enable cookies in your settings, Yep doesn’t use any cookies by default.

It does use non-personal data for purely ranking purposes though.

For instance:

• The number of times a keyword has been searched
• Or, the position of a search result that’s getting the most clicks

So, people that don’t like to share their personal information will probably feel more secure.

But, we’ve seen other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave try to make a name for themselves, but, they haven’t been able to put even a small dent in Google’s popularity.

In my opinion, privacy is one of those things people say they care about, but they really just don’t want to have to think about.

So, while Yep’s approach is unique, the idea of a “Different” search engine isn’t new, I even wrote a piece on the Best Alternate Search Engines recently covering many of them.

Yep Review: User-Experience

Although it’s debatable, generally, Google has been quite successful at keeping its search engine friendly and helpful for its users.

For one, it’s lightning-fast.

This means you don’t have to wait for it to fetch results for you. It can get you millions of relevant results in a seconds.

Yep, on the other hand, can take a tad bit longer to load results.

Now, I searched for a different term a day back and it took several seconds to load the results.

Today, it took less than a couple of seconds.

What this shows is that the search engine is getting better.

And it will likely continue to get better in the coming days.

Another thing you’ll notice while using Yep is the knowledge box on the right side of the first search results page.

Although this improves the user experience, it’s not fair to the content creators.

After all, why would anyone click on a search result when the search engine answers the question itself?

Google has been doing that with its featured snippet, stripping webmasters of their valuable traffic.

And, Yep seems to be doing the same on that front.

Here’s something strange.

As you can see, Yep recommends its users to try a different search engine.

And, what if a user actually redirects to Google?

One perspective would be that Yep is redirecting its users to their competitors.

Another one would be that they don’t care as long as the user finds the right result.

They want to be helpful even if it means sending the traffic to another search engine.

Now, let’s see how Yep stacks up against the competition, particularly Google.

Yep Vs Google

Some would say it’s unfair to compare a giant with a newborn.

Google was founded in 1998, which makes the search engine 24 years old.

And over time, the company has built a massive userbase of searchers and advertisers.

But, let’s not forget that this is not something entirely new to the team behind Yep either.

Ahrefs has been one of the top SEO tools partially because of its powerful bot.

Let’s compare Yep with the Google search engine.

An important characteristic to look out for is the relevance and quality of search results.

Here’s what you get from Google for the term “Search engine optimization”.

And, here’s what you’d see on Yep for the same term.

Now, we don’t see any search ads on Yep for now.

But, the first two organic results and the knowledge graph at the right are somewhat similar.

However, as you scroll down, Google also has other related stuff

Moreover, Google also gives you some relevant video results.

It even gives you some related searches at the end of the first page to help you find related content without having to type again.

On the other hand, Yep will ask you to search the term on other search engines.

So, clearly, Google offers a lot more on the first results page as compared to Yep.

But, whether or not that’s a good thing depends on the user and what they’re looking for.

Many users would like the more simplistic approach by Yep.

For instance, video results don’t make a lot of sense on the first page of a text-based search engine.

If someone wanted to see a video, they’d search on YouTube.

But, it’s also great to have every relevant result on a single page.

Let’s compare Yep and Google with a local search query now.

Here’s the first result on Yep for the term “Pizza restaurants near me”.

As you can see, the first result is a website that offers its own list of restaurants.

Whereas on Google, you’ll get a list of businesses with details like their opening hours, contact information, and even ratings.

Plus, you get to see nearby restaurants on a map, too.

That being said, the team is most likely still working on making the search engine better, so we should cut them some slack.

Let’s see how Yep performs on a navigational keyword.

Here’s what the new search engine returned for “Facebook”.

As you can see, Yep doesn’t seem to have enough data on the user intent for now.

Anyone searching for “Facebook” wants to navigate to the social platform.

Strangely enough, Facebook’s official website is nowhere to be seen on the first page.

News Search

Lastly, let’s do a quick news search to see if it returns the latest news.

Here’s what Google returns for “Cryptocurrency” news:

And here’s what the search page looks like on Yep:

Although the latest result is the same on both search engines, there’s something noteworthy here.

Yep is showing a relatively older result on top of the latest result.

It’s a Work In Progress

We’ve seen on a couple of occasions that the new search engine is far from perfect for now.

But, it’s getting better by the day and it still is in a sort of beta.

For instance, it was super slow to load results the first time I searched a term.

But, only a day or so later, the loading speed got better.

Moreover, initially, people encountered the “Something went wrong” error.

The point is that the search engine is still a work in progress.

We’ve seen Google transform the search engine industry over the years.

It won’t be fair to expect Yet to revolutionize it in a few days.

The team behind Yep has good intentions, and despite recent issues has built a great SEO tool.

They know the search engine market better than most of us.

That said, Yep is up against a competitor that has a market share of 92.48%.

Long story short, it would be an uphill battle even to compete against the search engine giant.

Yep Pros and Cons

Yep Pros

• The 90/10 profit model is great for content creators
• Privacy-focused
• Built from a reliable team with a proven track record
• Visually appealing
• Getting improved

Yep Cons

• Not perfect for local search yet
• Doesn’t seem to have enough data to understand user intent

Yep Review: The Verdict

Let’s wrap up this Yep review.

It’s probably too soon to draw conclusions.

Let’s face it. Google wasn’t always this good.

And although it’s dominating the search engine market, it’s not perfect.

Moreover, the 90/10 profit-sharing model is most likely going to attract a huge chunk of bloggers and SEOs.

That being said, a common searcher only cares about the user experience.

They don’t really care if the content creators are getting rewarded or not.

So, the experts behind Yep will have to fight an uphill battle to attract (and retain) enough users.

In my personal opinion, this was a bad business move. Ahrefs has a habit of going wide instead of deep.

They keep adding a lot of features to their tool, rather than making the existing ones the best they can be.

I think this shows an extension of that thinking… “More” instead of “Better” especially at a time when there are a lot of unhappy users of their software due to recent performance issues and pricing changes.

Of course I don’t have all the information here, this could be part of an attempt to prepare for a buy out… but to me it feels like a vanity project from people that think they know better than someone with the experience and resources.

But that’s just my take? What’s yours? Let me know in the Superstar SEO Facebook group or just shoot me a message in the chat below.