What Yep is, and where its results come from
Yep is the Ahrefs search engine: a general web search engine built by Ahrefs, the company best known for SEO software that measures links and keywords across the web. It launched in public beta in early June 2022 and was the brainchild of Ahrefs' founder and chief executive, Dmytro Gerasymenko.
Its results come from its own index — the engine's stored copy of the web — and that index is built by AhrefsBot, the crawler Ahrefs has run since 2010 to feed its commercial tools. Yep does not license Google's or Bing's results. Ahrefs says it operates the crawler, the index and the ranking itself, and a 2026 independent review likewise noted no dependence on Bing's API. That puts Yep in a small group: one of a handful of Western engines with a genuinely independent index at web scale, alongside Google, Bing, Brave Search and Mojeek.
What makes Yep unusual is the order in which it was built. Most engines build a crawler in order to run a search engine. Ahrefs had a large crawler for twelve years before it had a search engine, and Yep was a new use for crawl data that already existed. That inheritance is Yep's main asset.
The page's central caution belongs here rather than at the end: since 2025, Ahrefs' stated focus has moved from the consumer search engine to selling access to its index as an API, and the live state of the consumer engine at yep.com could not be confirmed in October 2026. The next section sets out exactly what could and could not be established.
Status in October 2026: what could and could not be confirmed
Stated plainly: whether yep.com still returns search results could not be confirmed in October 2026. When this page was researched on 27 October 2026, the yep.com home page and results pages returned a Cloudflare "Attention Required" block (HTTP 403) to the research environment, so no results page was seen. That is probably a block on automated fetching rather than what an ordinary visitor sees, but it means the consumer engine's live state is unverified.
What could be established:
- yep.com/about loads and still describes Yep as "our search engine", offering a "fast and accurate search experience" for humans and AI agents.
- Ahrefs' own pages now present Yep as an API product. Ahrefs' Yep page and the platform.yep.com site describe the Yep Search API — a "web search API that gives your AI real-time access to 100 billion pages" — aimed at AI agents and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG, in which an AI model fetches documents from a search index before writing its answer). Ahrefs' own timeline reads: "2025: The Search API launches as developer-first search for agents and RAG in the AI era," and platform.yep.com says Yep "pivots to provide a world-class Search API." The consumer site appears there under "Other products."
- Neither page says the consumer engine has closed, and no shutdown announcement was found from Ahrefs, from Gerasymenko or in the trade press.
- yep.com/robots.txt is live, allowing all crawlers and declaring a sitemap.
- An independent review dated 21 March 2026 treated yep.com as live and "still in beta with very limited traffic."
The best-supported summary is therefore this: as of October 2026, Yep's consumer site appears to remain online in beta, but Ahrefs' stated priority since 2025 has been the Yep Search API, which sells access to the same index to AI developers. If the consumer engine is later confirmed closed, the verdict on this page would change to discontinued for the consumer product, with the API noted.
AhrefsBot and the index
AhrefsBot is one of very few crawlers operating at a scale comparable to Google's and Bing's. At Yep's launch in June 2022, Ahrefs said AhrefsBot visited more than 8 billion pages every 24 hours, running on more than 1,000 servers holding more than 100 petabytes of data. Ahrefs' current Yep Search API page still describes AhrefsBot recrawling about 8 billion pages a day.
For index size, Ahrefs now claims a "100B+ page index" — 100 billion pages or more. That is Ahrefs' own figure, stated on its product pages in October 2026; it has not been independently audited, and it should be read as "Ahrefs says". For comparison, Mojeek published a figure of about 9 billion pages in 2025, while Google's index is generally understood to run to hundreds of billions.
A large crawl is not the same thing as good results. Search Engine Journal's review of the 2022 beta criticized the freshness of Yep's results. Building a crawler and storing pages are the expensive parts of search; ranking them well for every kind of query is a separate problem, and the evidence that Yep solved it is thin.
Two further details are recorded. At launch Yep said it planned to take part in IndexNow, the protocol through which sites notify participating engines of new or changed pages; current participation is unconfirmed. And Gerasymenko reportedly declined an offer, around 2019, from the since-closed engine Neeva to use Ahrefs' search data.
Who runs it, and how it was meant to make money
Yep is operated by Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, and Wikipedia states that Yep was incorporated there. Ahrefs is privately held and files no public accounts, so no primary financial document about Yep exists.
The investment figures come from the company. Wikipedia cites about US$40 million invested by August 2021; Ahrefs told TechCrunch it had invested about $60 million by June 2022. At launch it also described a $60 million data center in Singapore and plans for a US data center four times larger; whether the US facility was built has not been confirmed. TechCrunch reported in 2022 that Ahrefs was bootstrapped, funded from subscription revenue of roughly $100 million a year from more than 50,000 customers (company figures from 2022, not current), with Yep's search team numbering 11 inside a 90-person company.
The consumer engine's business model was advertising with an unusual promise. Yep pledged to give 90 percent of advertising revenue to the content creators whose pages appear in results, keeping 10 percent. Gerasymenko argued that because Ahrefs is bootstrapped, it could hold a split a venture-funded company could not.
That pledge has no documented payout. No public record was found of any payment to any creator, of any payout mechanism, or of any payout figure. Search Engine Journal's 2022 interview did not explain how payments would be calculated. The current yep.com/about page no longer restates the 90 percent figure, speaking only of "leaving money in the community." The accurate description is that the 90/10 split was announced, not that it was paid.
The business that Ahrefs now promotes is different: the Yep Search API, which meters usage per block of requests rather than charging a subscription. Structurally, Yep has moved from an advertising-funded consumer product toward the same model as Mojeek's and Brave's search APIs — selling an independent index to people building other products, chiefly AI products.
Privacy
Yep's privacy claims come from the company, chiefly a 2022 interview with Search Engine Journal. Ahrefs said that user-agent data is stripped and IP addresses trimmed before logs are stored; that a salted, hashed combination of IP address and user agent, without the query, is kept for up to 48 hours to prevent abuse and denial-of-service attacks; that no cookies are set by default; and that no user data is passed to third parties. TechCrunch reported that Yep builds no profiles for ad targeting.
Two qualifications apply. Yep's own wording is that it stores "as little as possible," which is not the same as storing nothing. And no independent audit of these claims was found. Because Yep answers from its own index, queries are not forwarded to Google or Microsoft, which is a structural privacy advantage over engines that resell those companies' results.
History
AhrefsBot began crawling in 2010. In March 2019 Gerasymenko announced plans for a search engine built on Ahrefs' own index — in Ahrefs' timeline, "2019: Ahrefs reveals plans for an independent search engine on its own index." About US$40 million had reportedly been invested by August 2021.
Yep launched in public beta in early June 2022: TechCrunch's launch article is dated 3 June 2022 and Search Engine Land covered the launch on 6 June. It offered web, image and news search, with the 90/10 pledge at the center of its pitch. In April 2023 it added YepTLDR, an AI summarization feature. In 2025 Ahrefs launched the Yep Search API and shifted its stated focus to it. In 2026 the consumer site still described itself as a search engine, while the API was marketed on the strength of a 100-billion-page index.
The arc mirrors the wider market of 2024 to 2026, in which the scarce asset in search became the independent index itself, and its main buyers became companies building AI systems. Ahrefs' Yep page sets out the company's own timeline.
Who it suits, and who it does not
It suits anyone who wants to see results from an index that is not Google's or Microsoft's — a real third source rather than a reskin. Because the index comes from one of the largest crawls outside Google and Bing, Yep is a useful comparison point for anyone studying how different independent indexes see the web.
It is a poor choice as anyone's main search engine in late 2026, and the reasons are structural rather than technical:
- Uncertain status. The consumer engine's live state could not be confirmed in October 2026, and its owner's attention has moved to the API. Relying on a consumer product that its owner no longer foregrounds is a poor bet.
- Still in beta, four years on. The 2026 review that treated the site as live described it as still in beta with very limited traffic.
- Freshness. Search Engine Journal's review of the beta criticized how current its results were, and no later independent evaluation of result quality was found.
- An unproven creator promise. Anyone choosing Yep because it pays creators is choosing on a pledge with no documented payout.
The fair verdict is that Yep's index is genuine and significant, and its consumer search engine is, on the evidence available, a side product of a company that now sells that index to others.
Common misconceptions
"Yep resells Bing or Google." It does not. Its results come from Ahrefs' own index, built by AhrefsBot.
"Yep pays creators 90 percent of its ad revenue." Yep pledged to in 2022. No payout to any creator has been documented, and its current about page no longer states the figure.
"Yep has shut down." That has not been established either. No shutdown announcement exists, and yep.com/about still describes a working search engine. What has changed is Ahrefs' emphasis: its own pages now lead with the Yep Search API.
"The 100-billion-page figure is a measured index size." It is Ahrefs' own claim on its product pages, not an audited count.
Frequently asked questions
Does Ahrefs have a search engine?
Yes. Ahrefs' search engine is Yep, launched in public beta in early June 2022 and built on the index produced by AhrefsBot, the crawler Ahrefs has run since 2010. Since 2025 Ahrefs has presented Yep mainly as the Yep Search API, which sells access to the same index to AI developers. Whether the consumer site at yep.com still returns results could not be confirmed in October 2026.
Is Yep still working?
It could not be confirmed in October 2026. Yep.com's results pages returned a Cloudflare block to the research environment on 27 October 2026, though yep.com/about still loaded and described Yep as a search engine. No shutdown announcement has been found. Ahrefs' own pages now lead with the Yep Search API and list yep.com under "Other products," without saying the consumer engine has closed.
Does Yep use Google or Bing results?
No. Yep ranks results from its own index, built by AhrefsBot, and does not license results from Google or Bing. Ahrefs says it operates the crawler, the index and the ranking itself, and a 2026 independent review noted no Bing API dependency. That makes Yep one of a handful of Western engines with a genuinely independent index at web scale.
Does Yep really give 90% of ad revenue to creators?
It pledged to, but no payout has been documented. At launch in June 2022 Yep promised to share 90 percent of advertising revenue with content creators. No record of any payment, payout mechanism or payout figure has been found, and Yep's current about page no longer states the 90 percent figure, speaking only of "leaving money in the community."
How big is Yep's index?
Ahrefs says more than 100 billion pages, as stated on its Yep Search API pages in October 2026. That is the company's own claim and has not been independently audited. At Yep's 2022 launch Ahrefs said AhrefsBot visited more than 8 billion pages every 24 hours across more than 1,000 servers, and it still cites a recrawl rate of about 8 billion pages a day.
What is the Yep Search API?
It is Ahrefs' paid programmatic access to the Yep index, launched in 2025 and described as a web search API giving AI systems real-time access to 100 billion pages. It is aimed at AI agents and retrieval-augmented generation, and it is metered by usage rather than sold by subscription. Ahrefs now presents it as Yep's main product.
Who owns Yep?
Yep is owned by Ahrefs, through Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, where Yep was incorporated. It was conceived by Dmytro Gerasymenko, Ahrefs' founder and chief executive, who announced plans for a search engine in March 2019. Ahrefs is privately held and bootstrapped, and said in 2022 it had invested about $60 million in the project.
