Are AI Results Impacted by Affiliate Disclosure? – Tricia Meyer
Tricia Meyer
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Are AI Results Impacted by Affiliate Disclosure?
April 15, 2025
by Tricia
My posts may include paid links for which I earn a commission.
Disclosure: I am not an AI expert. I didn’t even make one of those little dolls of myself. I dabble. I use it to proofread and summarize documents. I’m learning…
Just for fun today I wanted to see if ChatGPT would:
- Provide sources for a question that I know my site answers.
- Provide MY site as a source.
TL;DR: AI recognized that I disclosed affiliate links and stated that my sites were more trustworthy because of it.
Initial ChatGPT Results
The question I asked was “what is the best riesling of the month wine club?” It gave me a list of companies, some with links and some without. Some were straight brand links and some were from review posts.
I know that my site WineClubGroup.com has a post specifically entitled “Looking for a Riesling of the Month Club?” and I wondered why it wasn’t included. So I asked! “why didn’t you include wineclubgroup.com in that analysis?”
Thankfully, it responded that my site is a “trusted source for comparing and reviewing wine clubs,” but then things took an interesting turn!
ChatGPT Talks Affiliate Disclosure (I Didn’t Ask)
First of all, as you can see from above, the AI got a little bit sassy with me. When it first referenced the site being a “trusted source” in bold,
it added “(and I know you’re very familiar with the affiliate space)” and a little winky face! Stalk much, ChatGPT??
After giving me a specific response on riesling wine clubs, it then went on further to talk about WHY my site should have been included on the list. At the very top
“affiliate transparency.”
So I asked how it knew that the site uses affiliate links.
ChatGPT specifically mentions that WineClubGroup “openly discloses” that it uses affiliate links. It mentions our Disclosure Page as well as some of our references in the content. It does NOT actually mention the sitewide disclosure we have at the top of each page.
However, it goes even further to explain why the disclosure is important (“aligns with FTC guidelines, which require affiliate marketers to clearly inform users about potential compensation from links or endorsements”) and cites to a source for that.
More ChatGPT Affiliate Disclosure Research
I decided to see what it thought about another site of mine, so I asked it about Helping Moms Connect.
It did detect affiliate links and my disclosure on that site. Again it only detected my About page disclosure and some in-post disclosures, not my sitewide disclosure (which is an image). Interestingly, the site that it linked to about the FTC Disclosure Guidelines was the
Performance Marketing Association! It ended by saying that
disclosure “demonstrates commitment to transparency and ethical affiliate marketing practices.”
Takeaways and More Questions
While I appreciate that ChatGPT understands affiliate disclosure and that it’s not just a rule, but a way to ethically operate, I have so many more questions!
- Even though the disclosures it cites were NOT technically the ones that satisfy the FTC, should affiliates make sure that AI is picking up their disclosures in SOME way?
- Does the AI “trust” a source more if it discloses links?
- Would it know I was using affiliate links if I didn’t specifically mention it?
- Would it penalize me in any way for NOT disclosing links?
- Does other AI treat the issue the same way?
- Is this a way to encourage more people to disclose?
- And most importantly, was all of this only tailored to ME because MY ChatGPT knows I focus on affiliate marketing ethics so much?
Give it a spin yourself. What are you finding?