Coaley Peak GEO Research Centre Engine guide
Qwen 千问 How Alibaba's assistant searches, cites and sells, and how a brand gets into it.
Qwen is Alibaba's AI: a family of open-weight models used worldwide, a Chinese assistant app, 千问, built to get things done across Taobao, Alipay and Amap, and an international Qwen Chat. This guide covers its timeline, the four layers behind its answers, the crawlers you will and will not find, and how to opt out.
Independent guide: Coaley Peak is not associated with Alibaba Group. Trademarks
- Owner
- Alibaba Group
- Launched
- April 2023 as Tongyi Qianwen; public September 2023; Qwen app November 2025
- Home market
- China, plus an international service run from Singapore
- Languages
- Chinese in China; Qwen3 models cover 119 languages and dialects
- Open weights
- Many models under Apache 2.0; the largest under custom licences
- Crawlers
- None published for Qwen; Shenma's Yisouspider is documented
Overview
What Qwen is, and who uses it
Alibaba Cloud unveiled its large language model, Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问), in April 2023 and opened it to the public that September. It began publishing open weights in August 2023, and Qwen has since become one of the most widely used families of open models in the world, many of them under Apache 2.0. Qwen3, released in April 2025, was trained on about 36 trillion tokens in 119 languages and dialects.
In November 2025 Alibaba launched the 千问 (Qwen) app as its all-in-one consumer assistant. Alibaba says consumer-facing Qwen passed 300 million monthly active users across all platforms in February 2026, and QuestMobile counted 167 million monthly users of the China app in May 2026, second only to Doubao. Since January 2026 the app has worked with Taobao and Tmall, Taobao Instant Commerce, Amap, Fliggy and Alipay to complete tasks, and Alibaba says 250 million users had their first AI-driven shopping experience through it.
There are two services. 千问 in China is run by a Shanghai company under China's generative AI filings, and registering needs a Chinese mobile number. International Qwen, at chat.qwen.ai and in apps on the UK App Store, is run from Singapore, with prompts processed by Alibaba Cloud in Singapore. Visibility has to be tested in each.
Both search the web when they detect search intent and show reference sources with the answer, but Alibaba names no search provider and documents no crawler for Qwen. For brands, that shifts the weight to Chinese and international search visibility, to Alibaba's own commerce platforms, and to what Qwen's open models learned in training.
Timeline
Qwen, from launch to today
Alibaba Cloud unveils its Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问) model and opens enterprise testing.
Alibaba publishes open weights for Qwen-7B on Hugging Face.
Tongyi Qianwen opens to the public, which Reuters read as a sign of Chinese regulatory approval.
Alibaba releases Qwen2.5-Max through its cloud API and the Qwen Chat web app.
The Qwen3 family launches as open weights under Apache 2.0.
Qwen3-Max launches: a proprietary model of more than a trillion parameters.
Alibaba launches the 千问 (Qwen) app as its all-in-one consumer AI assistant.
The Qwen app is connected to Taobao and Tmall, Taobao Instant Commerce, Amap, Fliggy and Alipay for agentic tasks.
Qwen3.5 launches, with open weights for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B under Apache 2.0.
Alibaba reports that consumer-facing Qwen passed 300 million monthly active users across all platforms in February 2026.
Qwen takes user-built agents offline as China's rules on anthropomorphic AI services take effect.
Qwen3.8-Max, with 2.4 trillion parameters and a one-million-token context, launches. Its weights follow in August under a custom licence, alongside Qwen3.8-27B under Apache 2.0.
The international 'Qwen - Alibaba AI Assistant' app appears on the UK App Store.
Things to know
Things to know about Qwen
There are two products: 千问 in China, run by a Shanghai company and needing a Chinese mobile number, and international Qwen at chat.qwen.ai, run from Singapore and available in the UK.
Both search the web automatically when they detect search intent, drawing on 'publicly available third-party sources', and show reference sources with the answer. Neither names a search provider.
Alibaba publishes no crawler for Qwen, Qwen Chat or 千问. Bots called TongyiBot and QwenBot appear only in third-party directories, whose source pages no longer work.
The only Alibaba-documented search crawler is Yisouspider, for Alibaba's Shenma search engine. Nothing links it to Qwen's answers.
On Alibaba Cloud's API, Qwen's search can be restricted to chosen sites and returns [1]-style citations. Alibaba's Chinese docs warn that English queries may not trigger search.
The China app is a commerce gateway: it completes tasks across Taobao, Tmall, Amap, Fliggy and Alipay, so product discovery can happen inside Alibaba's own marketplaces.
Many Qwen models are Apache 2.0, including Qwen3, Qwen3.5-397B and Qwen3.8-27B. Qwen3.8-Max's weights use a custom licence requiring a separate licence for large model-as-a-service businesses.
Qwen's Training Data Summary says its models are trained partly on publicly available internet data, with dataset use pre-dating January 2022. It describes no opt-out for publishers.
In China, the app and models carry Cyberspace Administration of China filings, and outputs are safety-filtered and labelled as AI-generated.
Alibaba's figure of more than 300 million monthly users counts every platform; QuestMobile's 167 million counts the China app alone.
The four layers
How Qwen builds an answer
Every AI answer is made in four layers: what the model learned in pre-training, how it was tuned, what it retrieves live, and how it puts the answer together. Here is each one for Qwen, and what it means for a brand that wants to be cited.
Layer 1
Pre-training: the base (foundation) model
Qwen3 was pre-trained on about 36 trillion tokens in 119 languages and dialects, from web pages, PDF-like documents and synthetic data. Qwen's Training Data Summary describes public internet data, partner and contractor data and synthetic data amounting to 'trillions of tokens'. No knowledge cut-off is published. Alibaba does not say which model powers the China app today; Qwen Chat offered Qwen3.7-Plus, Qwen3.8-Max and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash when we checked.
What it means for you: Qwen's open models carry what they learned into thousands of other products, so Qwen's training data is a target in its own right. Accurate, substantial pages about your brand, in Chinese and in the other languages you sell in, are what it can learn from.
Layer 2
Post-training: tuning and alignment
Alibaba describes supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback, large-scale reinforcement learning with a universal reward system, and dedicated safety datasets. In China, the service is filed under the Cyberspace Administration of China's generative AI rules: inputs and outputs pass safety filters, and AI content is labelled. The rules for the international service are not published.
What it means for you: Answers in the China app follow Chinese content rules. For most commercial topics that shapes tone rather than which brand is named, but claims that would fall foul of Chinese advertising rules are unlikely to be repeated.
Layer 3
Retrieval: live search
When Qwen detects search intent, or the user turns search on, both sets of terms say it automatically searches publicly available third-party sources; the provider and index are not published. The China app also connects to Taobao and Tmall, Taobao Instant Commerce, Amap, Fliggy, Alipay and Damai to complete tasks. Through Alibaba Cloud's API, developers can choose search strategies that include page fetching and site restriction.
What it means for you: Two routes matter: strong visibility in the search sources Qwen draws on, in Chinese and English, and a complete, accurate presence on Alibaba's platforms, where the China app does its shopping and booking.
Layer 4
The answer: what people read
Both the China and international terms say Qwen displays reference sources and related content on the response page, and warn that answers may still be wrong. Qwen Chat offers Auto, Thinking and Fast modes, deep research, slides, and image and video generation. The China app is pitched as 'AI办事', getting things done: ordering, ticketing and travel booking inside Alibaba's ecosystem.
What it means for you: In the China app, an answer can end in a transaction on Taobao, Fliggy or Alipay rather than a click to your website. For brands, being well listed on those platforms can matter as much as being cited.
Crawlers
Qwen's crawlers and user agents
The user-agent tokens to look for in your server logs and to name in robots.txt.
| User-agent token | What it does | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| Not published | Alibaba has published no crawler or fetcher documentation for Qwen, Qwen Chat or 千问, whether for training, search or fetches users ask for. | Not published |
| Yisouspider Documentation | The crawler for Shenma search (神马搜索), Alibaba's mobile search engine, from UC. Documented by Shenma, which publishes only the token, not a full user agent. Nothing links it to Qwen's answers. | Follows robots.txt, according to Shenma's spider page, which now survives only in the Internet Archive. |
| TongyiBot | Listed by a third-party directory as an Alibaba fetcher for Qwen answers; the source page it cites now returns a 404. Not documented by Alibaba. | Not published |
| QwenBot | Listed by a third-party directory as a training-data crawler, with the user agent Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Qwenbot/1.0; +https://qwen.alibaba.com/). Not documented by Alibaba. | Not published |
Rules naming TongyiBot or QwenBot do no harm but may have no effect, and a user-agent match for either in your logs proves nothing, because neither publishes a way to verify it.
Crawl sources
Where Qwen crawls from, and how to verify it
Not published. Alibaba publishes no IP ranges, reverse DNS hostnames or networks for any Qwen, Qwen Chat or 千问 fetcher. Shenma's archived spider page says Yisouspider's addresses are a dynamic pool and deliberately not listed.
In practice, judge these bots by behaviour rather than identity: check whether visits claiming to be TongyiBot, QwenBot or Yisouspider follow your robots.txt and arrive in plausible volumes, and treat unverifiable traffic like any other unknown bot.
Opting out
How to opt out of Qwen, or limit what it uses
There is no Qwen-specific token
Alibaba documents no robots.txt token for Qwen. Rules for TongyiBot or QwenBot, which appear only in third-party directories, may have no effect.
Leave Shenma search
User-agent: Yisouspider with Disallow: / keeps you out of the Shenma search engine. Nothing documents any effect on Qwen.
Official pageNo training opt-out for publishers
Qwen's Training Data Summary says it uses publicly available internet data, and offers an opt-out only for users' own content. There is no meta tag or removal form for publishers.
Official pagePersonal data requests to international Qwen
Email privacy@qwen.com or use the Help Center. Rights include access, erasure, rectification, objection and restriction, with identity checks.
Official pageComplaints and personal data in China
For personal information, email privacy_zx@service.alibaba.com and mark it '千问'. To report illegal content or infringement, use the in-app report option, long-press an answer, or email legal-qianwen@service.alibaba.com.
Official pageShenma result removal
Rights holders can send a signed written notice with ID and proof of rights to sm-service@service.alibaba.com; Shenma removes links it confirms are infringing. This covers search only.
Official page
Publishers have no documented way to keep their content out of Qwen's training or answers. Qwen's open weights that are already downloaded keep what they learned, and blocking unverified bot names may achieve nothing. Accurate representation is the realistic goal.
How we help
How we get brands cited in Qwen
The Coaley Peak GEO Research Centre researches and implements GEO for SEO agencies and in-house teams, with foreign markets as our speciality.
Qwen visibility audit, China and international
We test 千问 and Qwen Chat separately, in Chinese and English, and record whether you appear among the reference sources, what each says about you, and where they send people.
Content Qwen can cite
With native Chinese writers, we build pages that state your facts plainly in simplified Chinese and English, so they work as the reference sources Qwen shows.
Alibaba platform presence
Because the China app shops and books inside Taobao, Tmall, Fliggy and Amap, we make sure your listings there are complete and consistent with what your website says.
Base model targeting for Qwen's open weights
Qwen's open models run inside products worldwide. We probe them with retrieval switched off to see what they learned about you, and work on the sources future versions draw on.
China market entry
We plan Qwen alongside Baidu, Doubao, DeepSeek, Kimi and Yuanbao, so your China strategy covers every assistant your customers are likely to ask.
More on our research, services and team at the Coaley Peak GEO Research Centre.
FAQ
Qwen GEO: questions
What is the difference between Qwen, 千问 and Tongyi Qianwen?
Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问) was the original name of Alibaba's model, launched in 2023. Qwen is the model family and the international brand. 千问 is the Chinese consumer app launched in November 2025, and international Qwen, at chat.qwen.ai, is a separate service run from Singapore.
Does Qwen show its sources?
Yes. Both the China and international terms say Qwen displays reference sources and related content with answers that use web search, while warning that answers may still be wrong.
Which crawler does Qwen use?
Alibaba documents none for Qwen. TongyiBot and QwenBot appear only in third-party directories. The one Alibaba-documented crawler is Shenma's Yisouspider, for the Shenma search engine, and nothing links it to Qwen.
Can I stop Qwen training on my website?
There is no documented publisher opt-out. Qwen's Training Data Summary says it uses publicly available internet data, and offers opt-outs only for users' own content.
Are Qwen's models open source?
Many Qwen models are open-weight under Apache 2.0, including Qwen3, Qwen3.5-397B and Qwen3.8-27B. The largest, Qwen3.8-Max, uses a custom licence, and some, such as Qwen3.7-Max, are proprietary.
Can people in the UK use Qwen?
Yes. The international Qwen service and its apps are on the UK App Store, run by a Singapore company. The China app, 千问, is a separate service that needs a Chinese mobile number.
Want a free chat about Qwen?
Tell us which market and brand you are working on. If we can help, we will set up a free, no-obligation chat with Stephen or Ethan.
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Independence and trademarks. Qwen, 千问 and 通义千问 are trademarks of Alibaba Group or its affiliates. Coaley Peak is independent: we are not associated with, endorsed by or a partner of Alibaba Group. This guide is our own research from public documentation and reputable reporting, checked in October 2026.
Reviewed by Stephen Grindley, research centre lead. Last checked .
Document reference: ISO_webpage_geo_engine_qwen_v1
Last modified: 7 October 2026