How Wolt’s search works

How Wolt’s search works

Wolt Search is designed to help you quickly and easily find products and services that are relevant to you. Here you can find information about why certain search results are shown to you.

Note that Wolt has two search functions that work differently: The standard search in the Wolt app and on the Wolt.com website, and the partner-specific search for a specific restaurant or business.

Standard search

The standard search is available from the navigation bar in the Wolt app or from the search bar on the Wolt.com website. Standard search allows you to search the entire Wolt platform for products, services, and partners.

When you enter a search term, we match your search with our index of partners (e.g. restaurant name) and product data (e.g. product description). To give you the most relevant search results, we also use synonyms and correct spelling mistakes. 

By default, the results are sorted by "Recommended", which is based solely on the partners' opening hours, text-based relevance of the search results (match of the search term with the partner and product data), popularity of the partner (partner sales figures on the Wolt platform) and distance of the partner to the delivery address. These main parameters are applied with the help of certain algorithms, weightings and business internal rules. Accordingly, the text-based relevance influences with a weighting of about 65% the position of the partner in the search results, after all search results have been previously grouped according to the opening hours. The popularity of the partner influences the results by about 35%. The partner's distance influences the results by max. ca. 10%. So if you visit the Wolt app or the Wolt.com website, partners that match your search query but are not open and partners that are further away from you and do not deliver to you will be displayed at the end of the search results. You can also sort the search results using different options, such as the delivery price and the partner's customer rating.

With your consent, we also store your search history and suggest searches that you have used in the past. If you want to delete your search history, you can revoke your consent, log out of the app, or manually delete previous searches.

Partner specific search

With the partner specific search you can search for items that are available at a specific partner. We match your selected search term with the partner's product titles and descriptions. The results of your search are always sorted based on the text-relevance of the search results (match of the search term with the product data).

Restaurants / Shops section

In addition to the Wolt search, the "Restaurants" or "Shops" area allows you to find all restaurants or stores in your area. Both sections can be accessed in the Wolt app or website Wolt.com via the navigation bar. Here you will find information about how the respective lists are compiled. 

After clicking on either the "Restaurants" or "Shops" area, you will be shown all partners in the relevant delivery area based on your delivery address. These are prioritized using different algorithms and internal business rules as follows: 

Restaurants: depending on whether you were already a customer with us, we use different algorithms to prioritize the results. 

If you are not a customer yet or are not signed up, partners are sorted based on their delivery time, popularity (partner sales numbers on Wolt platform) and price level. These main parameters are considered equally, but their influence on the partner's position in the search results changes based on the underlying data. 

If you are an existing customer, we prioritize partners based on your buying behavior and the buying behavior of other customers. This means that we filter for customers with buying behavior similar to yours to suggest partners that are new to you, but with whom customers similar to you have already interacted. Partner clicks, favorites and customer ratings are the equally weighted main parameters. In addition, we show only the closest franchise partners to your delivery address and prioritize any category lists displayed based on their popularity. 

Shops: In this section we prioritize partners based on their popularity (partner sales figures on the Wolt platform), their customer rating and their attractiveness (ratio of a partner's visibility to their sales figures). These main parameters are considered in equal parts. As with restaurants, we show only the closest franchise partners to your delivery address and prioritize any category lists displayed based on their popularity.

Paid placement

The order of your search results in the Standard search and the Restaurants / Shops section can also be influenced by paid placement. In this case, such results may be ranked higher than they would be based on the parameters listed above. Partners whose position is influenced by paid placement are marked as “Sponsored”.