Legal information
Referencing, dereferencing and classification methods
In accordance with article D111-7 of the French Consumer Code, Qwant wishes to inform you through this section of the methods by which content, services or products may be referenced or dereferenced on its services, as well as the criteria that may influence the ranking in the results pages.
Referencing, ranking and de-referencing of web pages and their media content
The general search engine accessible at Qwant.com allows users to find, among the web pages referenced by Qwant, content and web addresses (URLs) corresponding to the keywords entered. The content of the web pages is referenced by indexing robots (of the “Qwantify” family) that regularly scan the web pages in search of updates or new pages to be added to the indexing database. In addition, some of the results presented by Qwant come from third party indexing services, which complete the list of available results. Qwant uses different programming interfaces such as those of Microsoft Bing, Twitter, YouTube, or iTunes. The indexing and the results displayed do not claim to be exhaustive, even though Qwant makes every effort to find and display the most relevant content corresponding to the query. You can request the addition of your website, without any guarantee of visibility in the search results.
The classification of results during a search is carried out automatically by an algorithm, by default according to the relevance of the contents calculated in a relative way through a multitude of criteria. These criteria include in particular the presence, frequency, emphasis and context of the keywords searched for in the page content, the age of the page, the popularity of the site on which the page is present, or the legibility and accessibility of the page. No commercial agreement influences the calculation of relevance and therefore the ranking of a page in the search results. Nevertheless, advertisements linked to the keywords entered may be inserted within the results pages and are displayed if necessary with the word “Advertisement” or “Partnership”. In addition, Qwant may display its services or those of its partners in dedicated inserts, without altering the order of the results of the web pages offered at the end of a query.
Users who wish to delist content associated with their personal data may request to exercise their right to be forgotten. Web page editors who wish to prevent their page from being indexed can use the standard Robots.txt file by specifying the User-Agent “Qwantify”. Furthermore, any Internet user has the possibility to report illegal content in order to obtain its dereferencing.
Shopping
Qwant may display offers from merchants corresponding to the keywords entered in its search results pages. The offers presented under the heading “Shopping” correspond exclusively to those offered by Microsoft partner merchants, whose ads are displayed by Qwant in the order communicated by the latter. These merchants pay Microsoft for their listings, and Qwant is paid by Microsoft when you click on a merchant’s offer.
The default ranking of Shopping offers is determined by Qwant’s partner and is based on general criteria of relevance to your query, taking into account the quality of the advertiser’s data as well as the price of the product, excluding shipping costs, insurance or additional services.
The order of results is not influenced by your search or browsing history, which is not known to Qwant or its partner. On our platform, you search for products and services in a way that respects your privacy. The merchant sites you visit have their own terms and conditions of use (applicable taxes, shipping costs, delivery options, etc.) which you should read.
To request to be referenced and to become an advertiser on the shopping offers displayed by Qwant, you must contact Microsoft Advertising.
News
The news items displayed in the Qwant News section are taken from a restrictive list of media sites or similar, without commercial consideration. The results are displayed by default in order of relevance, calculated according to various criteria such as the keywords present on the referenced articles and their title, the popularity of the site, or the freshness of the publication. You can change the news ranking by choosing, for example, to rank them in chronological order.
To request to list your site on Qwant News, you can fill in a dedicated form, each request being examined on a case-by-case basis.
Mapping
When you search for location-related information, Qwant can display a map of the location you are looking for and a list of points of interest matching your query. If you are looking for professionals (e.g. restaurants), the list displayed under the name “Advertisements” corresponds to advertisers with whom there is a direct or indirect commercial link to Qwant. These ads are ordered according to different criteria that take into account the geographical relevance to the request made, the quality of the descriptive sheets (the more complete a sheet is, the higher it will be placed), and the rating given by the consumer reviews. These points of interest are displayed for information purposes only and are not exhaustive.
The displayed points of interest come from the OpenStreetMap project’s collaborative database or may come from the partners whose identity is then displayed.
To add or remove a point of interest, you can contact us with the details of your request.
- Last update: December 5, 2023