We have decided to eliminate Qwant from the suggested alternatives

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As we already have reported in our Telegram group we decided today to delete Qwant between alternatives to Google Search. The reason for this decision is the fact that we have stopped serving search results to whom uses a AdBlock. This choice, we know, is not appreciated by everyone because there are also those who rightly defend the right to Qwant to do whatever he wants and to want to protect himself from AdBlock.

We don't entirely agree or at least we don't think it's correct to suggest a project here on Le Alternative that uses these methods and for this reason we have decided not to suggest it anymore.

We have decided to eliminate Qwant from the suggested alternatives

We have always had some doubts about whether or not to propose Qwant as an alternative even though in the past we have even included it among "the three best alternatives to Google search“. This is because at the time (it is an article from 2020 which we will modify as soon as possible) we were not yet completely aware of the fact that his research almost all came from Microsoft Bing (as we discovered here) and we really liked the idea of a Search engine European.

Unfortunately Qwant does not have transparency on its side, they never really revealed where they got the results and in fact until a few years ago they boasted of wanting to be a real Search engine independent ¹ and even today they say to use Bing only when their Search engine it did not index the results well ².

We don't entirely doubt their word but what we have seen first hand is:

• When The Unknown Rioter disappeared from Bing it automatically disappeared from Qwant as well and despite our requests for explanations, neither a note nor anything else ever arrived. They simply pretended nothing happened.
• when Microsoft Bing deindexed our site for no reason, it immediately disappeared from Qwant too and it didn't reappear until it also returned to Microsoft Bing.

These two elements, added to the fact that its results always closely resemble those of Microsoft Bing, make us suspect that they aren't really telling everything (or are exaggerating their indexing a bit).

The straw that breaks the camel's back

All this lack of transparency means that when they also decide to insert, as they have done, a total block for those who use the AdBlock it becomes unacceptable for us to continue to suggest them as an ethical and valid alternative.

We would like to point out, for those who may be interested, that the block seems to be somehow circumvented by uBlock Origin on Firefox for desktop and from Brave Browsers.

We find it a real shame that it had to come to this because the idea of a Search engine European with its own index, as it was thought to be at the beginning, we really liked it since further Mojeek (which is British) there really is nothing. Of course there are meta-engines like Ecosia which is German or Lilo which is French but none of these have ever said they want to create their own index as Qwant has always said they want to do.

Let's hope that the higher ups at Qwant come to their senses and understand that force should be used against those who decide legitimately to use an ad blocker and a blocker tracers it can also (perhaps) bring something more into their coffers, it certainly causes them to lose credibility and reputation.

1. Web indexation: where does Qwant's independence stand? | Archive[↩]
2. Web indexing: where is Qwant's independence? | Archive[↩]

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