Search queries are not sold as a file

About and Privacy both refuse two related harms at once: selling search data, and using search history to build advertising profiles. Those refusals are easy to mash into one privacy slogan. They are not the same job. Selling a query file is a transfer. Profiling is a use. Oernoe’s public deal rejects both. This essay is privacy and Search writing about that double refusal, with the sale half as the hinge. It is not a remake of the no-sale-of-account-or-search-data deal essay, which keeps the whole funding deal in view. It is not a remake of the search-queries-are-not-ad-unit-input essay, which stays inside publisher AdSense method. The hinge here is narrower: what “sold as a file” would mean, how About and Privacy separate sale from profiling, and why Search limits language still has to name both.

## What About actually says about sale and profiling

About’s closing promise list is short on purpose. Oernoe does not sell account or search data, and does not use search history to build advertising profiles. Selected publisher pages on www.oernoe.com, such as guides and substantial journal articles, may show Google ads. Account creation is free. Some services have optional paid tiers, and those are marked. Ownership, policies, and contact addresses are public on this site.

The first sentence is two clauses. The sale clause is about merchandise. The profiling clause is about how Search is allowed to treat history even when nothing is sold. Keeping both clauses is how the company refuses a soft rewrite where “we do not sell” quietly permits internal advertising dossiers. About’s funding section repeats the architecture: free accounts, labeled paid features, selected finished www pages may show Google ads, no sale of account or search data, no sale of journal articles or links or reviews, sponsored pitches declined. The money paths that exist are named. Selling the search file is not among them.

Angel’s standing product test, as About frames it, asks whether a feature gives people more control over their data, or less. If it is less, it does not ship. That test is why Search is not allowed to keep a query file for ads. The phrase “query file for ads” is About’s own bridge between the two harms. A file kept for advertising is already a profiling posture even before a buyer appears. The sale refusal and the profiling refusal therefore travel together in company writing without collapsing into one vague privacy fog.

## What Privacy locks in, in different sections

Privacy Policy section 3 states the legal half without making it conditional on AdSense. We do not sell account information or search history. Oernoe does not use search history to create advertising profiles. We do not provide account or search data to advertisers for their own direct marketing. Three sentences. Sale, profiling, and advertiser handoff. A reader who only remembers “we do not sell” has missed the middle sentence. A reader who only remembers “no profiling” has missed the merchandise refusal.

Section 1 scopes advertising disclosures to selected publisher pages on www.oernoe.com. Those disclosures do not mean advertising is enabled on Chat, Drive, Docs, Health, Tracker, Account, login screens, or other application surfaces. That scope protects product hosts. It does not carve a hole in section 3. Section 2 still admits ordinary technical and security information: IP address, browser and device type, request time, requested page, referring page, diagnostic events, used to deliver pages, protect accounts, prevent abuse, investigate failures, and maintain reliability. Ordinary operations are not a sale. They are also not a license to build an advertising profile from Search history.

Section 4 then describes Google AdSense on eligible substantial publisher pages. Ads are requested as non-personalized by default. Google and partners may still process page context, cookies or similar identifiers, IP address, browser and device information, and ad interaction data to serve, secure, limit, and measure advertisements. Oernoe does not receive a copy of a visitor’s complete browsing history from Google. That paragraph is publisher advertising machinery on www. It is not Search exporting queries into an advertiser spreadsheet. How Search works makes the same split in product language: Search queries stay with Search; Oernoe does not sell Search queries or account data to advertisers; this publisher page is separate and may load AdSense under Google’s own policies.

## Sale versus profiling is a Search limits question

Search limits are not only about missing results or a finite index. One Search limit is commercial: the query is a retrieval key, not merchandise, and not the seed of an advertising dossier. How Oernoe Search works explains ranking without a search-history advertising profile. Each search is processed independently in the guide’s privacy section. Queries are not used to build an advertising profile. Technical and security logs needed to run Search may still exist, as Privacy describes, and those logs are not a license to sell query history to advertisers. The FAQ answers “Do you sell my data to advertisers?” with a direct no for account or search data, then names selected www ads as a different system.

That different-system sentence is the anti-mash. Reviewers who have watched other networks assume free search is paid for by selling behavior. Oernoe’s public pages refuse that assumption out loud. Funding is optional premium features and contextual ads on selected publisher documents. Funding is not a bulk export of what people typed at search.oernoe.com. Funding is also not a quiet internal profile that never leaves the building. Sale and profiling are both refused so the company cannot hide one behind the other.

Corrections already recorded what happens when the mash returns as slogan. Older homepage and product copy talked as if the whole Oernoe network had no ads, no cookies, and no third parties. That was false once this publisher site applied for Google AdSense. Search still does not use queries as an advertising file. Selected finished pages on www may show Google ads, and Google may process page context, cookies, IP address, and device data on those pages. Both sentences have to be true at once. The advertising-file phrase in Corrections is the profiling half. The no-sale sentences in About and Privacy are the merchandise half. Honesty after AdSense required naming publisher ads without converting Search into a sold file or a profile factory.

## What “sold as a file” would look like, and why the company refuses the shape

A sold query file would be a transferable record of what people searched, packaged for someone else’s marketing or analytics. Privacy’s refusal to provide account or search data to advertisers for their own direct marketing is aimed at that shape. About’s refusal to sell account or search data is aimed at the same shape in company voice. Neither page pretends that Google never processes anything on eligible www documents. Both pages refuse to let publisher AdSense become a euphemism for exporting Search history.

Profiling without sale would be the internal dossier: interest graphs, retargeting seeds, ranking warped by past queries for advertisers’ benefit. How Search works refuses that list of ranking inputs. Personalization that does exist is explicit and under account control: saved searches, bookmarks, language and region preferences, filters. Those are not automatic learning sold downstream. They are settings a person can delete. The guide’s key difference is control and non-sharing with advertisers. That is the profiling refusal stated as product behavior rather than as a legal clause.

Overlapping privacy essays on the Corrections list are a warning for this topic. Several journal URLs restated one privacy thesis with different titles. Length without a new reader job is thin content. Restating “we care about privacy” without separating sale from profiling from publisher AdSense is how that thinness returns. This essay keeps one job. The search query is not sold as a file. The search query is also not the raw material of an advertising profile. Publisher page context on an eligible www document is a different system, disclosed in Privacy section 4 and in How Search works.


## Free accounts and labeled paid tiers do not purchase the query file

About and the homepage both say account creation is free. Core features do not require a credit card. Some advanced features have optional paid tiers, and those are labeled. Privacy notes that payment details may be handled by a payment provider when a paid feature is offered. None of that language converts a free account into unpaid inventory for a data broker, and none of it converts a paid tier into a receipt for buying someone else’s queries.

The temptation, especially for readers trained on other networks, is to assume free search must be funded by selling behavior. Oernoe’s public deal refuses that assumption in company voice and in legal voice. Free accounts plus labeled paid features plus selected www ads is the funding map. Free accounts plus selling search data is not. Company writing that treats “free” as code for “we will sell the file later” is inventing a business model About declines. Company writing that treats a labeled paid feature as proof queries are safe forever still has to keep the profiling refusal; a subscription does not erase Privacy section 3.

Anoepal’s job, as About frames it, is to keep that deal running. The wider funding essay already walked free accounts and labeled paid tiers end to end. Here the deal matters only as the fence around the query file: not merchandise, and not advertising-profile fuel, on a free tier or a labeled paid one.

## How to check without trusting a slogan

Open About and read the promise list and the funding section. Open Privacy sections 1, 3, and 4. Open How Oernoe Search works and read the privacy-during-search block and the funding FAQ. Open Corrections’ zero-tracking entry if you want the failure that made the split mandatory. Open the homepage FAQ lines on tracking and monetization; they match: no search-history advertising profiles, no sale of account data, selected www pages may show contextual Google ads, Google may process page, device, cookie, and IP information on those pages.

If a journal line claims Search queries are sold, it loses against About and Privacy. If a journal line claims nothing is ever processed by a third party on www, it loses against Privacy section 4 and Corrections. If a journal line claims non-personalized publisher ads erase the need for a no-sale rule, it is inventing a collapse the legal pages refuse. Product claims still lose to the homepage Services directory. Policy claims still lose to Privacy, Cookies, and Terms.

Privacy rights requests go to privacy@oernoe.com. Legal questions go to legal@oernoe.com. General support goes to support@oernoe.com. Editorial factual errors with a URL go to hello@oernoe.com. Keeping those inboxes separate keeps the deal readable. A rights request is not a sponsored-post pitch. A sponsored-post pitch is declined. A Search bug is not proof that queries are merchandise.

## What this essay refuses to invent

It does not invent buyer names, query volumes, or revenue splits. It does not invent a claim that every third-party page in the index can be erased by one privacy export. It does not treat Status green as proof of a sold-file audit. It trusts the live pages: sale and profiling are both refused; publisher AdSense on selected www documents is a different system; Search limits include the commercial limit that queries are not sold as a file and not used as advertising-profile fuel.

Search queries are not sold as a file. They are not supposed to become a profile either. The public deal is weaker if you only remember one of those sentences.