FAQ
What Good Faith Mark records about 286 affiliate programs, who pays for what, and where the line between the two sits.
- Who decides whether a program is trustworthy?
- Affiliates do, by reporting whether they were paid. The registry records and checks those reports; it does not form an opinion of its own, and a program cannot move up a tier by paying. See the methodology.
- What does the $29 listing buy?
- The right to display the mark on your own site, and a highlighted profile. It never buys a verification tier, a better rating, or removal of a recorded change. Every program is listed and citable for free whether it pays or not.
- Why do so many programs show “not stated”?
- Because their own affiliate page does not say. We record what a page states plainly and nothing where it does not. A guessed commission rate would be worse than a blank in a record meant to be relied on years from now.
- How often is a program re-read?
- Daily. Each reading is appended, so an unchanged page is still a dated fact.
- My program’s terms are recorded wrong. Can you fix it?
- The current reading can be corrected and the correction is itself recorded. Past readings stay: the database refuses updates and deletes on history tables, which is what makes the record worth citing at all.
- Is a listing here a link my SEO benefits from?
- It depends which page, and money is not what decides it. A program we found ourselves is written about without its involvement, so the link on its profile is
nofollow: we are not vouching for a company that never asked to be here. A listing someone files about their own product carries a followed link, and that link is earned rather than bought: the badge has to be on their site and has to stay there. It goes up when the badge does and comes down when the badge does, whatever anyone has paid. - Can I get the data?
- The whole registry is public and free to cite. Machine-readable entry points are in the footer.
- What happens to a proof I attach to a report?
- It is read once by a machine, which records only the payer’s name, the amount, the currency and the date. Those are compared with your report by a fixed rule, the result is written down with its reason, and the file is deleted in the same step. Nobody at the registry looks at it, and the program never sees it.