Provide clear affiliate disclosures
Checks for affiliate and sponsored content disclosures to maintain transparency.
- Add a clear and conspicuous disclosure for any affiliate or sponsored links
- Place the disclosure at the top of the page, before any affiliate links appear
- Use simple, unambiguous language to explain the financial relationship
Rule Details
Transparency regarding financial incentives is crucial for building a sustainable relationship with your audience and complying with consumer protection laws.
Code Example
<article>
<header>
<h1>The Best Laptops for Developers in 2024</h1>
<div class="disclosure" style="background: #f9f9f9; padding: 10px; border-radius: 4px;">
<p><small><em>Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on one and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.</em></small></p>
</div>
</header>
<p>Looking for a new laptop? Here are our top recommendations...</p>
</article>Why It Matters
- Legal Compliance: Adheres to FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and other international regulations regarding online advertising.
- User Trust: Demonstrates honesty and transparency, which can lead to higher conversion rates over time.
- SEO Quality: Prevents being flagged for "sneaky redirects" or hidden affiliate programs that can negatively impact rankings.
- E-E-A-T: Supports the "Trust" pillar by showing you aren't hiding financial motivations.
Exceptions
- Necessary utility or compliance pages can be intentionally brief and should not be judged by the same editorial-depth expectations as ranking-focused content.
- AI-assisted drafting is not a failure by itself; flag unsupported claims, missing editorial review, or low-originality output instead.
- When a page has both trust-signal issues and crawl/index problems, make the page eligible to rank first and then improve the content quality signals.
Verification
Automated Checks
- Inspect rendered HTML and HTTP headers to confirm the expected metadata or crawlability signal is present.
- Test the affected URL with Google Search Console or equivalent tooling where relevant.
- Re-crawl a representative page set after deployment.
Manual Checks
- Confirm the change does not create conflicting canonical-url, robots, or structured-data signals.
Use with AI
Copy these prompts to use with your AI assistant, or install the MCP server to use directly from Claude, Cursor, or Windsurf.
Check
Verify implementation
Verify that all pages containing affiliate links or sponsored content have a clear, visible disclosure before the links appear.
Fix
Auto-fix issues
Add a standardized disclosure statement at the beginning of your content or near affiliate links to inform users of the partnership.
Explain
Learn more
Explain the legal and ethical importance of affiliate disclosures and how they impact user trust and SEO.
Review
Code review
Review metadata generation, rendered HTML, structured data, and response headers related to Provide clear affiliate disclosures. Flag exact routes or templates where search-facing output violates the rule, and describe how to verify the final page output.