Merchant Search Engine Policies
ShareASale’s Pay Per Click (PPC) Compliance Tool makes it easy for affiliates who use Search Engine Marketing to stay on top of merchant keyword policies and provides transparency into any violations of a merchant’s keyword policy. ShareASale PPC Compliance processes encourage merchants who choose to restrict affiliates from bidding on certain keywords on search engines to upload their restricted keywords in a standardized format. This merchant keyword policy is visible within an Affiliate’s PPC Compliance admin.
Affiliates must respect and follow the keyword policy listed by the merchant. If an affiliate violates a merchant’s keyword policy, the merchant may take action to remediate the situation. Remediation may include revoking approval into the merchant’s program or withholding open and unlocked commission. While ShareASale’s compliance tools encourage merchants to list their keyword policy in a standard and accessible fashion, affiliates must also read and respect the terms and conditions listed within a merchant’s profile as merchants may include a keyword policy (among other policies) within their terms and conditions.
Using ShareASale’s Pay Per Click (PPC) Compliance Tool
Affiliates can stay on top of keyword policy violations, view merchant keyword policies, and respond to merchants all within their PPC Compliance Tool Admin. Affiliates may sort merchant data within the admin by open bidding violations and by most recently updated merchant bidding policy. Merchants are able to use ShareASale’s search engine monitoring service to check if keywords listed within their policy are present on various search engines. Monitoring can return results on keywords that are added or changed on a merchant’s listed keyword policy starting two days after the last edit date. It is important to keep on top of changing keyword policies and to regularly check this tool for updates. Clicking on the ‘view keywords’ button within the PPC compliance tool will show a merchant’s full keyword policy:
It is also possible to export all merchant keywords policies via the ‘Export Keywords’ button within the PPC Compliance Tool. For a more programmatic approach to tracking keyword policy changes, affiliates may also access keyword policies and sort changes to policies via the ShareASale API.
If ShareASale’s monitoring service detects a restricted keyword on a search engine, a bid violation is issued. The bid violation is visible to both the merchant and affiliate. Bid violations can be closed or resolved by the merchant. If an affiliate has an open bid violation, we recommend immediately removing any restricted keywords from their search engine marketing campaigns and proactively contacting the merchant to resolve the matter.
An affiliate’s bid violation history can be exported in bulk via the ‘Export Violations’ button.