Most sites do disclose. Most disclose where nobody looks.
The argument about affiliate disclosure is almost never about whether a notice exists. It usually does. The question that decides whether it means anything is where — and unlike most compliance questions, that one is measurable.
Placement is the requirement. Guidance from the US FTC uses the word unavoidable: the test is whether an ordinary reader would actually see the disclosure before acting, not whether it exists somewhere on the domain.
The three placements, and what each is worth
| Where | Seen by a reader? | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Above the first recommendation | Yes | Does the job |
| Beside the link itself | Yes | Does the job |
| Footer of a long article | Rarely | Exists; does not inform |
| Separate disclosure page | Almost never | Letter, not substance |
rel="sponsored" only | No — machines only | A different obligation |
The confusion worth clearing up
rel="sponsored" and rel="nofollow" are real obligations and worth
getting right. They tell search engines that a link is commercial. They tell a
human being nothing whatsoever — the attribute is invisible in the rendered page.
Both things get called “disclosure”, which is how a site ends up genuinely believing it has complied while every actual reader remains uninformed. They are two separate requirements with two separate audiences, and satisfying one says nothing about the other.
Why the footer fails
Not because footers are forbidden, but because of what a reader has already done by the time they reach one. In a 4,000-word roundup, the disclosure at the bottom arrives after every recommendation has been read, weighed, and possibly clicked. The information was there and it arrived too late to be information.
The useful mental test: would a reader reach the first affiliate link before reaching the disclosure? If yes, the placement fails regardless of how prominent the notice is once you get to it.
What makes this checkable rather than arguable
Most compliance questions need a lawyer because they turn on intent or interpretation. This one mostly turns on document order — where the disclosure sits relative to the first commercial link. That is geometry, and geometry can be measured:
- How many outbound links on the page carry affiliate parameters or known network domains.
- Whether any disclosure text exists at all.
- Whether it appears before the first such link, or after it.
- Whether the links are marked
sponsoredfor machines, separately.
None of that requires judging whether a review is honest. It reports where things are, and lets the reader draw the conclusion — which is the only defensible position for a tool that is not a law firm.
What a tool must not claim
That a page is unlawful. Disclosure rules vary by jurisdiction, turn on facts not visible in the markup, and are enforced by regulators rather than by extensions. The honest output is this page has eleven affiliate links and its disclosure appears after the seventh — a fact — not this page is non-compliant, which is a legal conclusion nobody reading a web page is in a position to reach.
MurmProof counts the commercial links on a page and locates the disclosure relative to them. It reports position and count, and refuses to say whether anything is unlawful.
How MurmProof works →→Questions
Where does a disclosure have to appear?
Close to the recommendation and before the reader acts on it.
Is a disclosure page enough?
No. Almost nobody navigates to it, so it informs nobody.
Does rel=sponsored count?
For search engines, yes. For readers, not at all — it is invisible.
Why does the footer fail?
Because the reader reaches the recommendations first.