New Affiliate Report – Discover the Size and Strength of Competitors’ Affiliate Programs

January 22, 2009

The Search Monitor launched an exciting addition to the Affiliate Monitor reports today (available to ‘Pro’ level clients). You will find new reports called ‘Affiliate List’, released in beta, which includes:

1. Affiliate List Summary: This report will show you a list of each competitor who is receiving clicks from affiliate marketers on sponsored search. You can compare the relative strength of each competitor’s affiliate programs by looking at the ‘Affiliate Visibility’ field.
2. Affiliate List Details: This report lists each competitor who is receiving clicks from affiliate marketers plus the ad copy, and affiliate urls of each affiliate responsible for generating the clicks to your competitor. From here you will gain access to the entire link path from the ad text to the final landing page, simply click on green arrow icon to view the link path.

These reports are designed to assist you with the following tasks:

• Measure the reach and strength of your affiliate program.
• Measure the reach and strength of your competitors’ affiliate programs.
• Identify your competitor’s affiliate strategy.
• Catch non-complying affilates by viewing the entire link path and landing pages.

In case you were wondering how we do this…We determine the identification of affiliates in several ways:

1. We look for known affiliate network urls appearing in the destination url;
2. We crawl from the destination urls to the landing page and look for affiliate urls on the landing page; and
3. We log the entire url path from the ad text to the final landing page. You can see the entire linking path by clicking on the icon.

These reports offer a powerful way for you to manage your affiliate marketing channel in a controlled and deliberate way.

(Note: We never click on search ads. We crawl destination urls separately from the SERP)