Affiliate Disclosure

An affiliate disclosure is a clear statement on a comparison or review site that it may be paid when a reader signs up with an operator it links to. It exists because the reader is entitled to know that the site has a commercial interest in the click, and in many jurisdictions advertising rules require the relationship to be obvious rather than buried. A useful disclosure has three properties. It is visible where the decision is made — near the links or at the top of the page, not only in a footer document. It is specific about the mechanism: that the site earns from sign-ups or deposits, not a vague reference to partnerships. And it is honest about what the commercial relationship affects, most importantly whether it influences which operators appear and in what order. What a disclosure does not do is make a ranking neutral. If ordering is commercial, saying so is the only accurate description, and a site that discloses payment while presenting a paid order as a merit ranking has disclosed the funding and hidden the consequence. Read the disclosure and the methodology together; the second is what tells you how to read the first.