XATHERYN SEARCH

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 23, 2026

Xatheryn Search (“Search”), our web search engine and its local business listings, Places (together, the “Service”), is operated by Xatheryn LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company (“Xatheryn,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This Privacy Policy explains how Xatheryn LLC collects, uses, and protects information when you use the Service. Xatheryn LLC is responsible for the personal information described in this Policy. By using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Policy.

1. What Search Is, and Person Lookup

Search is a general web search engine: you type a query, and it returns pages from our own index of the public web. We do not take your name, photo, posts, contacts, or anything else about you from your Xatheryn account and use it to look for you, or anyone else, elsewhere on the web, and Search is not a likeness-matching tool.

Search has one limited person feature, Person Lookup. It answers two kinds of question. A question about a job, such as “CEO of a company” or “president of the United States,” is answered for anyone. A lookup of a named person can be used only by a signed-in adult, and is described below.

What a listing contains. Only a name, a job title, an organisation, a link to the page where the organisation published that information about its own leadership or staff, and the date we read that page. We do not hold, and cannot show, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, relatives, or social media handles for anyone. We do not list minors, and we do not list members of Xatheryn Connect because of their Connect accounts. Listings can be out of date or belong to a different person with the same name.

What we record about you. To enforce the rule of one lookup every 14 days, and to protect Xatheryn LLC and other people from misuse, we record, against your Xatheryn Connect account, the time of your last lookup and, each time, the time you ticked the confirmation box and the version of its wording. We ask Xatheryn Connect whether your account belongs to an adult, and receive only a yes or no. We do not record whom you looked up or what you typed into the lookup form.

Removal. Residents of the states listed at xatheryn.com/search/remove-listing can ask for listings under their own name to be hidden, without an account and at no cost, where a privacy law in that state gives them that right. We do not offer removal to residents of other states. Person Lookup also links to official public record sites, such as court and sex offender registries, so that you can search them yourself. We do not copy or store what is in them.

2. You Do Not Need an Account

Anyone can search without signing in. Signing in is only needed to write reviews or suggest business hours in Places. When you sign in, you use your Xatheryn Connect account: Connect confirms who you are and passes Search your Connect username and Connect user ID (an internal identifier that stays the same if you change your username). Search has no password or passkey of its own, and never receives yours. Your Connect profile is covered by the Xatheryn Connect Privacy Policy.

3. Information We Collect

Search queries. The text you type, so we can return results. Searches for local businesses are also recorded together with a short-lived random session token and the time. That token is created by your browser, is not linked to your account, and is used only to notice when people rephrase the same search several times, so we can fix the listings or place names that made them do it. We do not keep a search history for you, and there is no saved history to view.

Which results helped (anonymous). When you click a web result, your browser tells us the search words and the result you picked, and whether you came back to the results within a few seconds. We add these to running totals for that search and that result, such as “clicked 40 times, came straight back 6 times,” and use those totals to rank results that help people higher. We do not attach your account, a session ID, a cookie, or a time to these counts, and they cannot be used to tell who searched or clicked anything. The note that you just clicked a result stays in your own browser tab and is erased once it is used.

Your location, if you allow it. If you grant location access, your device’s location is saved in your browser’s storage on your device. When you search, your browser also gives us a copy, rounded to about 110 meters, which we keep in a cookie that lasts three hours (see Section 8). Only our servers can read that cookie, and your browser sends it back to us only with Search pages. We use it so Search and Places can show businesses near you. We do not put your location in the address of the page, and we do not store it with your query or your account. While a Search page is open and knows your location, it also tells us roughly where you are (rounded to an area about 11 km across) so our crawlers can look for local businesses, news, and public institutions there first. That note carries a random value made for that one page view and nothing else about you, and we keep only the rounded area, not your position.

Reviews and hours you submit. If you are signed in and review a business, we store your rating, your written review if you add one, how likely you found them to answer the phone if you say, the date, and your username. If you suggest a business’s hours, we store the hours you entered and which account sent them, so each account counts once.

Account information. If you sign in, your Connect username and Connect user ID, as described in Section 2.

Technical information. IP addresses and basic request logs, used for reliability, security, and preventing abuse such as automated scraping.

4. What Other People Can See

Your reviews are public. Anyone using Places can see your review, including your username, rating, written text, and date. Please do not include personal details in a review that you would not want public.

Suggested hours can be shown on a business’s listing, but are not shown with your name.

Nothing else in this Policy is visible to other people.

5. Our Index, Places, and Content Safety

Our index is built by crawling the public web, and we honor websites’ robots.txt instructions. Places listings come from information businesses publish about themselves on their own websites, such as name, address, phone number, and hours, along with reviews and suggestions from Search users.

Before a page is added, it passes a content-safety check that blocks child sexual abuse material, illegal marketplaces, malware, and scams outright, and screens adult content using an automated filter plus an AI model we run on our own servers, so legitimate material such as news or education is not wrongly blocked. Pages we decline to index are never stored or shown, whatever a search asks for.

If you run a business and something in your Places listing is wrong, or you want it removed, contact us using the details in Section 12.

6. Advertising and Sponsored Results

Sponsored Places. Some businesses pay to appear in Places. A sponsored business is always marked “Sponsored.” Sponsored and unsponsored businesses are mixed in turn rather than putting every sponsored one first, and a business only appears as sponsored for searches it already matches. Paying never changes a business’s reviews or ratings. Sponsored placement that we sell is not targeted at you using your account, your location history, or data from any other Xatheryn product.

Sponsored links. Some advertisers also pay to have a link shown above the web results. These links are always marked “Sponsored,” and one appears only when your search contains a phrase the advertiser chose.

Google ads. Search results pages also show ads served by Google AdSense. The Search home page has none, and we do not show Google ads on a results page that shows crisis resources or a blocked topic. Google and other third-party vendors use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to Search and other sites on the Internet. Because Google’s ad script runs on the results page, Google can see that page’s address and content, which include the words you searched for and the results shown, such as nearby businesses and how far away they are. We keep your location out of the page address and we do not send your location coordinates to Google. We do not give Google your Connect account information for ads. You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google’s Ads Settings, or opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info.

7. How We Use and Share Information

We use this information to: (a) return results for your searches; (b) show nearby businesses when you share your location; (c) publish and display reviews and hours; (d) prevent abuse, such as scraping or fake reviews; and (e) improve our index, business listings, and safety systems.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only: (a) publicly, for the review details described in Section 4; (b) with service providers who help run the Service and may use it only for that; (c) with Google, through the advertising script described in Section 6, to the extent Google receives information when its ads load; (d) if required by law, subpoena, or other legal process, or if we believe in good faith that disclosure is needed to protect our rights, our property, or the safety of others; or (e) as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets involving Xatheryn LLC or the Service, subject to this Policy or a successor policy we will tell you about. Search does not send your queries or reviews to other Xatheryn products.

8. Cookies and Browser Storage

If you sign in, we use a strictly necessary session cookie to keep you signed in and a separate cookie that protects against cross-site request forgery. If you allow location access, we also set a location cookie, described in Section 3. It holds your location rounded to about 110 meters, expires after three hours, can be read only by our servers (not by scripts on the page), and is sent only with Search pages. It is used only to find results near you, never for advertising or tracking. Your device’s location is also kept in your browser’s storage, as described in Section 3. Search itself does not set advertising or tracking cookies. On results pages, Google AdSense may set or read its own advertising cookies in your browser, as described in Section 6.

9. Data Retention

Reviews and suggested hours are kept until you delete them, you ask us to remove them, or the business listing is removed. Search records made with a session token are kept to keep improving listings; they are not linked to your account and cannot be used to identify you. Anonymous click totals are kept as long as they help rank results. The location cookie expires on its own after three hours. Server logs used for security and abuse prevention are kept only as long as needed for that purpose. Person Lookup records (the time of your last lookup and of each confirmation, described in Section 1) are kept as long as needed to enforce the limit and to protect Xatheryn LLC and others from misuse.

10. Your Rights and Choices

You can search without signing in and without sharing your location, and you can turn off location access in your browser at any time. You can also delete the location cookie and your saved location at any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information. To remove a review or use these rights, contact us using the details in Section 12.

11. Children’s Privacy and Changes

The Service is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age where you live), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under that age. For a search built for schools, see Xatheryn Academy, which has no accounts and collects no personal information.

We may update this Policy. Material changes will show a new “Last updated” date.

12. Contact Us

For questions about this Policy, to correct or remove a business listing or a review, or to use your rights, contact Xatheryn LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company, at [email protected].