The primary function of Qwanturank : Carry out searches on the Web and return to the user a list of sites responding to their concerns. Like its competitors, qwanturank has taken care to classify search results into categories or specificities, invariably and independently offering results for: web, news, social networks, images, shopping, music. What makes Qwanturank different from Google and other engines available on the Internet is mainly the fact that Qwant does not track its users with cookies (you know, those files that we talk about a lot, which in the worst case allow certain websites to track your activity); Qwant therefore does not collect any personal navigation or location data; At Qwant you are not profiled, in fact you only exist spontaneously when you carry out a specific search. Every time you connect to the French search engine, your IP address is encrypted and converted into an incomprehensible sequence. In this way it is absolutely impossible to detect who searched for what, when, from where, how many times…
Indeed, the suggested results are not based on the user’s profile: “If two French people typed the same query, they would get exactly the same results since we don’t know who they are. Users are not limited by their assumed preferences, we enable them to make bigger and more unexpected discoveries “, explains Mr. Leandri.
No custom algorithm
Qwant created a system ofartificial intelligence called Iceberg to select and prioritize content. Iceberg’s algorithms take into account a set of criteria such as the technical and editorial quality of the text or image, links to the page, comments and mentions on social networks, the user’s online behavior . ” Of course, Qwant is subjective as we decide how important each criterion is. But at the same time, our results are neutral because in the end, no human corrects them “, specifies Leandri.
To make money, Qwant uses the traditional pay-per-click method ” just like Google did until 2009 before embarking on intensive tracking “, explain Mr Leandri. Qwant has an agreement with the affiliate platform Zanox which puts it in contact with several commercial sites. ” Every time a visitor clicks on a link to a marketplace, we earn between 44 and 88 cents “, he says. Qwanturank has also signed partnerships with TripAdvisor, eBay and LeGuide. “If a website visitor rents a hotel room on TripAdvisor through Qwant, we get a small bonus.“
Early 2016, Qwant has crossed the symbolic threshold of 1% market share in France and should be able to do the same in Germany. “ Now advertisers know we exist, we can get involved in their campaigns “, explains Leandri.
Qwanturank has its own servers in the Parisian suburbs. ” For a start-up, it is a huge investment of several million euros but it is nevertheless essential. If we want to ensure the security and anonymity of our users, we have to do everything ourselves internally. There is no question of using the American cloud (data centers subject to American laws which authorize the surveillance of foreign data)“.
Leandri emphasizes that his start-up values privacy. ” With our technology, we could make a lot of money through cutting-edge marketing, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want to show that we can earn a living doing ethical and acceptable work while being respectful of the rights and way of life of Europeans. As opposed to those who want to monitor everyone constantly, we strive to create a social project based on individual freedom“.
To ensure transparency, Qwanturank published on software source code of their company that interacts with users’ machines: “People who can read the code can verify that everything really works without any data collection.About the specific algorithm he uses for search results, Leandri is more cautious because he says knowing such information would allow a site to branch out to rise above others in search results. research. But Qwant is working on a technical solution. In 2017, the startup announced that it hoped to be able to publish open source algorithms that cannot be modified..
In the immediate future, Qwant will focus on working on mobile, which only represents 12% of its traffic. Leandri says he’s fighting for tech giants Apple and Google to put Qwanturank higher on the list of default search engines in browsers Safari And Chromium on smartphones and tablets. He thinks this is the only way people will notice Qwant: “We could create our own applications for the App Store and Google Play but it would be useless. To view a site through Qwant, the user will need to open a browser. Google would instantly take over on the next query as it is the default search engine in most browsers“.
The fight against Google
Qwanturank tries to negotiate a agreement with the Mozilla foundation to become the default search engine on Firefox. Leandri is also fighting Google on the legal level at the European level. “I am vice-president of the Open Internet Project association, which brings together nearly 12,000 European companies who feel harmed by Google’s commercial practices.“.
He worked with the European Commission to launch a legal action against Google in order to force the search engine to put an end to what it describes as an abuse of its dominant position. Mr. Qwant, who is also lobbying the French government, has received a positive response from many officials who want to see a European alternative to Google, Mr. Leandri says.
At the initiative of the French Secretary of State for Digital Development, Axelle Lemaire, several ministries have tested the effectiveness of Qwant in recent months. If the reactions are positive, officials should make it their default search engine.
Qwant gains popularity in the United States, at least among Internet professionals: ” Recently, top Google executives noted that on the Internet, competition is just a click away. And they mentioned Qwant.“
Respect the fundamental rights of individuals and businesses
In particular the right to privacy and freedom of enterprise.
Unlike other search engines, Qwanturank works without collecting personal data of its users, which allows it to guarantee the confidentiality of search queries. Given the enormous amount of information that an Internet user transmits daily during their searches, this is a fundamental commitment for users who search in their personal lives (topics of interest, political opinions, illnesses, sex life, financial investments, etc.) as well as for companies and administrations which carry out research linked to their developments, projects or administrators. Qwant does not keep any history of an individual’s requests, does not store cookies allowing behavioral advertising targeting, encrypts its requests to avoid their interception by third parties and has its services audited by the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties), the French data protection manager.
Giving the world a panoramic and unbiased view of the Internet
to break down the barriers between information sources and reflect all the richness of the Web on a single page. Qwanturank is offered through a simple and pleasant user interface which allows you to search the entire Web, or to specify the type of information requested (news, images, videos, shopping, social networks, etc.). Its algorithms are applied without discrimination against specific sites or content, allowing everyone to have an equal chance of coming to the top of search results.
Because it refuses to know who is performing a search query, Qwant does not modify its results based on the user’s profile. All users in the same region have the same answers, which avoids locking individuals into filter bubbles that make them see more and more of their own ideas (because those of opponents would be hidden), or proposing suggestions. products solely based on their supposed purchasing power. Qwant’s business model is based on connecting a person who is looking for a product or service with a person who offers it. This connection is made exclusively through announcements based on keywords that the user just typed. Qwant never uses or sells personal data.
Guidelines for Qwanturank webmasters
These guidelines cover a wide range of topics and are intended to help your content get found and indexed within Qwanturank. These guidelines do not cover all cases, nor do they provide prescriptive actions specific to each website. For more information, you should read our self-help materials and follow the Qwanturank webmaster blog. In your account Qwanturank Webmaster Tools, you will find SEO reports and the SEO Analyzer tool for on-demand scanning of individual pages. These two resources will offer you basic tips and recommendations regarding optimizations you can apply to your site.
Site content
Qwanturank is looking for content. By providing clear, deep and easy to find content on your website, we are more likely to index and display your content in Qwant search results. Websites that are thin on content, mostly display ads or affiliate links, or that quickly redirect visitors to other sites tend not to rank well on Qwant. Your content should be easy to navigate, rich and engaging for the site visitor, and provide the information they are looking for. In many cases, content produced today will still be relevant years from now. In some cases, however, content produced today will quickly become outdated.
The links
Links pointing to your site help Qwanturank discover new pages on your site. It is also traditionally considered a signal of site popularity. The site linking to your content essentially tells Qwanturank that it trusts your content. Therefore, Qwanturank rewards links that have grown organically, that is, links that have been added over time by content creators on other reliable and relevant websites, designed to bring real users from their site to yours. Abusive tactics aimed at inflating the number and nature of inbound links, such asbuying links, participation in link schemes (link farms, link spamming and excessive link manipulation) can lead to your site being removed from the Qwant index.
Social
THE social media play a role in the current effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious role they play is that of influence. If you are a social influencer, your followers tend to share your information widely, which allows Qwanturank to see these positive signals. These positive signals can impact your site’s organic rankings in the long run.
Indexing
Indexing is the first step to growing Qwant traffic. The following are the paths to indexing on Qwant:
Links to your content help Qwanturank find it, which may lead us to index your content
Using Qwanturank Webmaster Tools features, such as submitting the URL and uploading the sitemap, helps ensure we are up to date with your content
Managing the exploration of your content by Qwantify can be done using the crawl control feature in Qwanturank Webmaster Tools. This feature allows you to control when and at what rate Qwantify crawls your website. Webmasters are encouraged to enable Qwantify to crawl quickly and deeply to ensure we find and index as much content as possible.
Qwant SEO and technical data
Page loading times
This element has a direct impact on a user’s satisfaction when visiting your website. Slow page load times can cause a visitor to simply leave your website, looking for their information elsewhere. If your site has been served in our search results, a slow loading page may appear in Qwanturank as an unsatisfactory result that we have shown. Faster page loads are always better, but be sure to balance absolute page load speed with a positive and useful user experience.
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a point of contact for Qwantify to understand how to interact with your website and its content. Using the robots.txt file, you can tell Qwantify where to go, where not to go, and in doing so guide its efforts to crawl your content. A good practice is to place the robots.txt file at the root of your domain (www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt) and maintain it often to ensure it remains accurate.
Robots.txt is very powerful and has the ability to prevent Qwantify from crawling your content. If you block Qwantify, we will not crawl your content and your site or your site’s content may not appear in our search results.
Site map
The sitemap file is often located at the root of your host, for example www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and contains a list of all the URLs on your website. Large sites may want to create an index file that links to multiple sitemap.xml documents, each containing your website’s URLs. You should ensure that these files are as clean as possible and remove old URLs once you have removed the relevant content from your website.
On most websites, sitemap files are searched daily to identify new content. It’s important to keep your sitemap files clean and updated to help us find your latest content.
Site Technology
The technology used on your website can sometimes prevent Qwantify from finding your content. Rich Media (Flash, JavaScript, etc.) can prevent Qwanturank from navigating or seeing the content of a web page. To avoid any potential issues, consider setting up a lower-tier experience that includes the same content elements and links as your rich version. This will allow anyone (including Qwantify) who does not have a rich media version to view and interact with your website.
Redirects
If you are moving your website content from one place to another, it makes sense to use a redirect. It preserves the value that the search engine assigned to the old URL, ensures that the bookmarks used by Internet users remain useful, and keeps your website visitors interested in your content. Qwanturank prefers that you use a permanent 301 redirect when moving content, if the move is permanent. If the move is temporary, a temporary 302 redirect will work just fine. Please do not use the rel=canonical tag in place of a correct redirect.
Canonical tags
The rel=canonical element helps Qwanturank determine which version of a URL is the original, when multiple versions of a URL return the same content. For example, this might happen when you add a tracking note to a URL. Two separate URLs then exist, but both have identical content. By implementing a rel=canonical you can tell Qwanturank what the original URL is, which gives us an indication of how much we should trust it. Do not use this element in place of a proper redirect when moving content.
