You are a website publisher and want to know if Qwant uses your content to train AI models? Here is the answer and the available options.
Does Qwant use your content to train AI models?
No. The indexed content is used only to:
- Appear in the search engine results.
- Feed AI responses when one of your articles is relevant, in which case your site is cited as a source with a link.
This approach (retrieval-augmented generation) uses your content at the time of the response, citing the source. It is different from ingestion into a model’s parameters.
Distinguishing indexing bots from AI training bots
Several bots may visit your site:
- QwantBot: Qwant’s indexing bot for the search engine.
- GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, etc.: bots from AI model publishers, to train their systems.
You can allow or block each one independently.
Blocking third-party AI training bots
To prevent your content from being used by model publishers, add these directives to your robots.txt:
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: / User-agent: anthropic-ai Disallow: /
The list of bots evolves. Refer to specialized SEO resources to keep it up to date.
What happens if I block QwantBot?
Your site will no longer be indexed by Qwant and will disappear from our results. Blocking QwantBot blocks classic indexing, not a specific AI usage.
Qwant’s position
Qwant is committed to:
- Not using indexed content to train its own closed models.
- Systematically citing sources in AI responses.
- Respecting robots.txt directives published by publishers.