How scoring works
The four parts of the fit score, the points each one is worth, and the rules we keep. The same page is at recruitaffiliates.ai/how-we-score.
Every affiliate in Discover gets a fit score out of 100. Open a row and the drawer shows the four parts. Each reads "points out of the most it can earn". One line beside it says what the points are for. The total sorts the list. The parts are the reason.
An affiliate is someone who promotes your product and earns a cut of each sale they send you.
The four parts
| Part | Out of | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| How closely they cover your topic | 40 | Do their pages match your keywords and the rivals you named? |
| How big their audience is | 30 | Is it the size you asked for, in the countries you sell to? |
| Recent activity | 20 | When did they last publish something on your topic? |
| Commercial fit | 10 | Do they already promote products like yours, and can you write to them? |
Topic (40)
A site starts with 18 points for being found at all. It earns more for where its page ranks for your keywords. That is 18 for 1st to 3rd, 12 for 4th to 10th, and 6 for 11th to 20th. The same steps count for your rivals' names, capped at 12. Naming a rival you listed adds 4, and a second page on the topic adds 6. A tracked link to a rival's affiliate program adds 10, or 5 if the link can't be tied to one rival. The part stops at 40.
Audience (30)
Traffic is grouped into bands. High is 30 points, medium 20, low 8. With no figure, a website is placed by Chrome's public ranking of sites by visits. The top 10,000 is high, the top 100,000 is medium, and the top million is low. With neither, the row says "No audience figure yet" and scores 5. If you asked for small or large sites, a band that is the wrong size for you loses half its points. If you set countries to boost, a match adds 5. If you set them to hide, a miss takes away 10.
A podcast has no public audience, so the row says "Not measured". Its 30 points follow its topic and activity parts.
Activity (20)
A page from the last 30 days earns 20, within 90 days 14, within a year 8, older 3. If we can't date a site's pages, the row says "not known" and scores a middling 8 instead of a guess. A site that two weekly scans in a row didn't find drops to 3.
Commercial fit (10)
A page we read and confirmed as earning commission earns 6. Proof we found without that confirmation, such as a tracked link, a disclosure or a promo code, earns 4. A public way to write to them adds up to 4. A personal address earns 4. A shared address earns 3, or 2 on one person's own site. A contact form earns 2. Mentioning a rate adds 6, and naming two or more rivals adds 4. Two or more rivals' affiliate programs linked from a proven page is the full 10.
What the total means
| Score | Label |
|---|---|
| 80 to 100 | Strong fit |
| 60 to 79 | Good fit |
| 40 to 59 | Possible match |
| Under 40 | Weak fit |
With One list on, the middle band reads "Worth a look" and the lowest has no fit label, only a reason.
The rules we keep
- Proof only lifts. Evidence that someone already earns commission raises their score. It never lowers anyone else's.
- A strong fit needs a specific page. If the only page we have is their home page, the score stops one point short of Strong fit and the row says why.
- No made-up numbers. An unknown audience or date is shown as unknown, never as a guess.
- Only evidence the row keeps. Every point traces to a page or a figure you can open from the row.
- Nobody buys a better score.
- Every score keeps its version. When a rule changes, the version changes, and a rescore can tell an old score from a new one.
YouTube rows show YouTube's own numbers and no score from us. See YouTube discovery. Affiliates you add by hand aren't scored.
For how to read a row, see Discover and Saved.
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