VisibilityTrace is an affiliate-supported research hub. This page describes — in operational terms — how affiliate links work on the site, where they appear, what decisions they influence, and what they do not influence. This is a disclosure of practice, not legal advice.
How VisibilityTrace may earn money
Some outbound links to vendor websites on VisibilityTrace are affiliate links. If a reader clicks one of those links and later signs up for the vendor's paid plan, VisibilityTrace may receive a commission from the vendor. The reader pays the same price they would pay coming from any other source.
Affiliate commissions are the only revenue model the site relies on. VisibilityTrace does not run display advertising, does not sell sponsored placements, and does not accept paid inclusion in buyer guides or comparisons.
Which links are affiliate links
Affiliate links appear only inside an explicitly labelled AffiliateCTA
block. Every CTA block is accompanied by a short disclosure line that names the
relationship and links back to this page.
Inline references to vendors inside body text are plain links to vendor public
pages — pricing pages, documentation, blog posts, changelogs — and are tagged
rel="nofollow noopener". These inline references are not affiliate
links and do not generate commissions.
How affiliate references are stored
Raw affiliate URLs — URLs that carry a partner-specific tracking parameter that attributes a signup back to VisibilityTrace — are never committed to the public repository. A separate, gitignored configuration file maps each partner identifier to its affiliate reference at build time. The public source code carries only the partner identifier; the affiliate reference is injected into the rendered HTML during the site build.
This separation has two effects. First, the public repository cannot leak affiliate references to scrapers or to anyone forking the code. Second, if a partner program is paused or terminated, the build configuration changes the rendered link without requiring an edit to the page itself — the page falls back to a neutral link to the vendor's public website with no affiliate parameters attached.
When a vendor gets a CTA on VisibilityTrace
A vendor receives an AffiliateCTA block only after one of the following
has happened:
- The vendor has a dedicated public information review page on VisibilityTrace, drafted from operator-approved public sources.
- The vendor is covered inside a Deep Research buyer guide where the research process and source list have been reviewed.
Vendors that are mentioned only in passing — as illustrative examples, methodology references, or category context — do not receive an affiliate CTA on those pages. A CTA without a documented evidence trail is not allowed.
What an affiliate relationship does not change
- Coverage decisions. Which tools VisibilityTrace covers is decided by category demand and operator priority, not by the affiliate rate of a specific program.
- Evaluation outcomes. A vendor's affiliate rate has no effect on the criteria applied to that vendor's public claims, pricing transparency, or methodology disclosure.
- Recommendation order. Buyer guides do not promote a vendor to a higher position because the vendor has an affiliate program. Ranking criteria are stated up front in each guide.
What VisibilityTrace will never claim
VisibilityTrace will not describe partner tools using language that implies hands-on testing that has not been performed, official relationships with AI vendors that do not exist, or outcomes (rankings, citations, traffic) that cannot be guaranteed. The methodology page lists the evidence labels in use; the underlying claim discipline is enforced by automated checks before any page is built.
Updates and corrections
Partner status, affiliate references, and disclosure copy are reviewed on the cadence described in the update policy. If a partner program is paused, the CTA falls back to a neutral link before the next scheduled review. Corrections to disclosure copy or to a vendor's pricing as quoted on a review page are processed as quickly as practical after they are reported.