Ahrefs, a leading SEO firm, is planning to launch a search engine. It will be supporting content creators and will also provide user privacy. The announcement was made by Ahrefs CEO Dmitry Gerasimenko who revealed plans to compete with the dominant search engine, Google.
Dmitry has proposed a more free and open web where content creators can directly generate revenue from search ads with a 90/10 split in favor of publishers.
The new search engine will be designed to solve two major problems that the tech giant Google will never fix or solve it and here they are:
- Confidentiality: Firstly Dmitry raised privacy concerns on Google — something we have all known for a long time about how the search engine giant tracks us. The CEO has plans to ensure that user privacy is protected through the new search engine. He said that the first reason why he wants to do this is, “The DuckDuckGo reason, to provide a search engine that values your privacy and doesn’t use private data to benefit them.”
- Profit Sharing: Secondly, he points out that Google’s revenue model is unfair for content creators. Citing Wikipedia as an example, Dmitry argued how the popular website has to struggle for funds despite being so helpful. The tech giant Google does not share profits with content authors, and this is wrong, according to Ahrefs. “Google earns $100 billion from its search engine. Imagine that they suddenly introduce a profit-sharing model of 90/10, transferring $90 billion a year to those publishers who create content,” Dmitry Gerasimenko said.
He concluded by saying that a search’s job is to encourage the growth of quality content and innovation in publishers. This is what he aims to achieve through the new Ahrefs search engine.
