Terms of sale

Terms & Conditions of Sale

Last updated 12 August 2026

1. Purpose and scope

These terms and conditions of sale (the “Terms”) govern all services supplied by HelloSearch (“HelloSearch”, “we”) to its clients (“you”, the “Client”). They apply to every order, whatever the channel through which it is placed.

Business clients only. The service is offered exclusively to businesses acting for the purposes of their trade or profession. It is not offered to consumers, and no consumer may place an order. By placing an order you confirm that you are acting as a business and that you have the authority to bind your company.

Placing an order means you accept these Terms in full. They prevail over any general or special purchase conditions of the Client, whatever those conditions say and whenever they are communicated, unless HelloSearch has expressly agreed otherwise in writing.

HelloSearch may update these Terms. The version that applies to an order is the version in force on the day that order is placed.

2. The service

HelloSearch is a link building service built for AI search. In practice the work covers the following steps:

• Prompt tracking. We track the prompts that matter to your business and identify the sources that AI assistants and search engines draw their answers from. Campaigns launch after a 7-day tracking period, so that the selection rests on real data.
• Sourcing. We select the most relevant sources among those prompts and attach an opportunity score to each one.
• Outreach. We contact the editors and publishers behind those sources.
• Negotiation. We negotiate the terms of each placement, including any fee the editor or publisher asks for.
• Approval and placement. Every opportunity is submitted to you with its price and its opportunity score. Nothing goes live without your sign-off. Once you approve, we arrange the placement, including producing the content where the publisher requires it.

Day-to-day work runs in a shared Slack channel. You also receive a weekly analysis report and a quarterly meeting.

Publishers and editors are independent third parties. HelloSearch neither owns nor controls them, and their editorial decisions remain their own.

3. Orders and approval

You fund a budget upfront. The minimum opening budget is $1,000. Work is drawn down against that budget as placements are approved.

Each opportunity is submitted to you with its price and its opportunity score, together with any editor or publisher fee attached to it. Your approval, given in writing in the shared channel, is what forms the order for that placement. Until then nothing is commissioned, nothing goes live and nothing is drawn down from your budget.

You may decline any opportunity, without justification and at no cost. Approval given by any person you have admitted to the shared channel is treated as your approval, and it is for you to decide who has access to that channel.

4. Prices

All prices are in US dollars and exclude tax. The price of a placement depends on the opportunity score of the source:

• Opportunity score 20–40: $50
• Opportunity score 40–60: $100
• Opportunity score 60–75: $200
• Opportunity score 75 and above: $300

Opportunities scoring below 20 are never submitted to you, so no price applies to them. [TO CONFIRM: which tier applies at the exact boundary values of 40, 60 and 75, as the published bands meet at those figures.]

The budget estimator on our pricing page uses a flat $175 per backlink. That figure is an illustration only. It is not a quote, it does not bind either party, and the price that applies to a placement is the one shown to you when you approve it.

Editor and publisher fees are negotiated per opportunity. They sit outside the estimator, they are passed through to you without mark-up, and they are always shown to you before you approve. HelloSearch charges no retainer and no separate service fee on top of the rate card above.

The rate card applies to every placement you approve. Where a publisher accepts a link swap, or waives or reduces its own fee, it is that publisher fee which falls away: the rate card price for the placement is still due. No placement is free of charge.

Nothing is invoiced for a placement you have not approved.

[TO CONFIRM: whether any volume, loyalty or early-payment price reductions are granted (article L441-1 of the French code de commerce requires the terms of sale to set out any such reductions) and whether producing the content a publisher requires is included in the placement price or charged separately.]

VAT. French VAT applies at the rate in force for clients established in France. For businesses established in another EU member state that supply a valid intra-EU VAT number, VAT is reverse charged. For clients established outside the EU, the service is outside the scope of French VAT. You are responsible for the accuracy of the VAT number you provide.

5. Payment

Placements are not invoiced one by one. The budget is invoiced when it is opened, and once funded it is drawn down as placements are approved. When it is exhausted, a further invoice is issued for the amount you choose to add. Invoices are payable within 15 days of the invoice date.

Invoices are payable by bank transfer or by credit card. The details to use are set out on each invoice.

Any sum still unpaid after the due date carries late payment interest at the refinancing rate of the European Central Bank plus 10 percentage points. Interest runs automatically from the day after the due date, without any reminder being necessary. A fixed indemnity of €40 for recovery costs is also due for each unpaid invoice, and HelloSearch may claim further compensation on proof that its recovery costs exceeded that amount (articles L441-10 and D441-5 of the French code de commerce).

While an invoice is overdue, HelloSearch may suspend the service, including work already in progress, without compensation. No amount may be withheld or set off against sums due to HelloSearch without its prior written agreement.

6. Budget, unused funds and refunds

Whatever is left of your budget after 60 days is returned to you, or kept as credit for your next campaign. The choice is yours.

Amounts committed to opportunities you have already approved are not part of the unused balance, even if the placement is not yet live. Placements already approved and delivered are not refundable.

If either party stops the service mid-campaign, the remaining budget is treated the same way: once the placements you approved before the stop date have been accounted for, the balance is returned to you or kept as credit, again at your choice.

The 60-day period runs from the date your budget is funded. If you choose to have the balance returned, it is paid back within 30 days of that choice.

[TO CONFIRM: what happens if you state no preference at the end of the 60 days, and what becomes of an amount committed to an opportunity you approved that the publisher ultimately does not publish.]

7. Duration and termination

There is no minimum commitment and no notice period. Either party may stop at any time, by written notice given in the shared channel or by email.

Stopping does not affect the opportunities you approved before the stop date. We carry on working on them, and the amounts due for those that are delivered remain payable. Section 10 applies to them as it does to any other placement: your approval does not mean a publisher has accepted or published. Stopping does not affect any sum already due either. Sections 9 to 14 survive the end of the relationship.

8. Client obligations

• Provide accurate information about your business, your target prompts and the pages you want linked, along with any access, materials or brand guidance a placement needs.
• Respond to opportunity submissions within a reasonable time. Opportunities are time-sensitive and publishers may withdraw them. HelloSearch is not liable for an opportunity lost while awaiting your answer.
• Warrant that your website, your brand and any content or materials you supply are lawful, accurate, not misleading and do not infringe the rights of any third party, and that you hold the rights needed for us to use them.
• Keep your billing details and your intra-EU VAT number accurate and up to date.

HelloSearch may refuse to submit or place content that it considers unlawful, misleading, or contrary to a publisher’s own rules.

9. Deliverables and intellectual property

Deliverables are the content produced specifically for you for an approved placement, and the reports we send you.

Once published, content sits on a third-party website and is subject to that publisher’s own terms and editorial control. Section 10 explains what that means for what we can and cannot promise.

HelloSearch keeps all rights in its methods, its scoring model, its tooling, its templates, its publisher relationships and its know-how. Nothing in these Terms transfers them to you.

10. Warranties and liability

HelloSearch is bound by a best-efforts obligation (obligation de moyens), not by an obligation of result. We commit to doing the work with the care and skill you would expect of a professional in our field.

We do not guarantee, and cannot guarantee:

• any ranking, position, traffic level or commercial outcome;
• that a publisher will accept a placement, or publish within a given time;
• that your brand will be cited by any AI model or search engine, or that any citation will persist;
• that a published placement will remain online, since that is the publisher’s decision.

HelloSearch is not liable for penalties applied by a search engine or an AI platform, for loss of ranking, or for de-indexing, whatever the cause.

Replacement. HelloSearch monitors the placements it obtains for you. If a placement is removed within six months of publication, HelloSearch replaces it at no further cost to you. This is a firm undertaking and it is the one exception to the best-efforts obligation set out above. It covers removal of the placement; it does not cover loss of ranking, de-indexing, or any change in how a search engine or AI platform treats the source.

HelloSearch is liable only for direct and foreseeable damage. Its aggregate liability, all claims combined, is capped at the sums paid by the Client over the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to death or personal injury, to gross negligence (faute lourde), to wilful misconduct (dol), or to any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under French law.

11. Confidentiality

Each party keeps confidential the non-public information it receives from the other, and uses it only for the purposes of the service. The obligation is mutual.

Campaign work is discussed in a shared channel. Everything exchanged there is treated as confidential, and each party is responsible for the people it admits to that channel.

The obligation does not cover information that is public without breach of these Terms, that a party already held or developed independently, that it lawfully received from a third party, or that it must disclose under a legal or regulatory obligation.

No fixed term is attached to this obligation: it lasts for as long as the information concerned remains confidential.

HelloSearch will name you as a client, or use your logo, only with your prior agreement.

12. Personal data

Each party complies with the General Data Protection Regulation and the French data protection legislation.

For the business contact details the parties exchange in order to run the relationship, each party acts as controller for its own processing. HelloSearch also acts as controller for the contact data of the editors and publishers it approaches, which it processes for its outreach activity. Where HelloSearch processes personal data on your behalf and on your instructions, it acts as your processor.

No separate data processing agreement is entered into. The roles set out above are the ones the parties rely on.

Personal data may be shared with the service providers HelloSearch relies on to operate, namely its hosting, team-communication, analytics and billing providers. They are bound by confidentiality and act on instructions where they process data on our behalf.

You may exercise your rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability by writing to theo@tryhellosearch.com. Further information is set out in our legal notice.

13. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by force majeure within the meaning of article 1218 of the French code civil. The affected obligations are suspended for as long as the event lasts, and the party concerned informs the other without delay.

Force majeure does not suspend payment of sums due for work already delivered. If the event makes the service impracticable, either party may stop it under section 7.

14. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by French law.

Any dispute relating to their formation, interpretation, performance or termination falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris, including where there are several defendants, where a warranty claim is brought, and in interim or summary proceedings.

English is the language of the contract. If these Terms are translated, the English version prevails.

If a provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in force.

Questions about these Terms: theo@tryhellosearch.com, or book a time at cal.eu/team/hellosearch/backlinks.