If you’re not sure what type of service you provide, our Regulation Checker has more guidance on these service types and whether any exemptions apply.
If you have more than one service in scope of the Act, you need to complete a risk assessment for each service separately. If you provide a combined user-to-user and search service, you must comply with both the user-to-user service and search service risk assessment duties.
A user-to-user service is one that enables its users to generate, share or upload content (such as messages, images, videos, comments, audio) on the service that may be encountered by other users of the service. This includes services that enable user interactions, such as private messaging, and services that allow users to upload, generate or share pornographic content.
A search service is an online service which is, or includes, a search engine which enables users to search more than one website or database. Search services provide users with results in response to their search requests, often alongside suggestions for further searches and sometimes with personalised features (such as results for nearby restaurants based on the user’s location). There are two main types of search services – general search services and vertical search services. Within general search services, we distinguish between those services that do their own crawling and indexing and those that rely primarily on others for this (referred to as a ‘downstream’ general search service). Vertical search services enable users to search for specific topics, or products or services offered by third-party operators with which they have a relevant arrangement (which may be contractual), such as flights, financial products or insurance. If your online service only searches one website or database it will not be classed as a search service. For example, if your website has a search bar to find internal content on your website. If you have an embedded search bar that is controlled by a third party, the regulations related to search services are likely to apply to the third party.
