Where this site stands today
SPF Guide currently earns no commission on anything. There is no affiliate account, no retailer arrangement, no sponsorship and no paid placement anywhere on this site. Nothing here has been bought. This page exists because that may change, and a disclosure policy written before any money is involved is worth more than one written afterwards.
If you are reading this page and still see no commission notice above a comparison, that is because there is nothing to notice.
The rule that does not move
No commercial arrangement will ever change a score, a ranking, a verdict or the order of a list. Not by a place, not by a point. Scores on this site come from the five criteria set out in how we score, applied to formulation categories against published evidence and standards.
A retailer that pays a commission on a click gets exactly the same treatment as one that does not: none. If a category scores badly, it scores badly whether or not a link to it earns anything. If an arrangement ever made that uncomfortable, the arrangement would end, not the score.
What would be disclosed, and where
Disclosure is only worth anything if it reaches the reader before the click, not in the small print afterwards.
- A plain statement sits above the fold on every page carrying a monetised link, in the same type size as the body text, saying that links on the page may earn a commission and that commission never affects a score.
- The statement names the relationship in ordinary words. Not a badge, not an asterisk, not a phrase a reader has to decode.
- Every individual commercial link is identifiable as one where it sits, not only in a notice somewhere else on the page.
- Any page where a commercial relationship exists links back to this page.
- Where a whole piece is commercial rather than a link inside it, the label is at the top and uses the word advertisement or the word sponsored, not a softer substitute.
How a commercial link is marked
Every outbound retail, affiliate or paid link carries rel="sponsored", or rel="nofollow" where sponsored does not fit. This is not optional and it is not applied selectively. A link that earns money passes no ranking signal, which is the point of the attribute and also the honest position: we are not selling the site's authority.
Ordinary editorial links to standards bodies, regulators, manufacturers' technical documents and published research are not commercial and are not marked as though they were.
What is refused outright
- Payment for a score, a place in a list, inclusion in a category, or removal from one.
- Any arrangement where a brand, retailer or trade body sees a page before it is published.
- Copy written by a commercial partner and published as though the desk wrote it.
- Reviews, testimonials or results presented as a reader's words when they are not.
- A commission arrangement that cannot be disclosed, for any reason.
The rules this follows
The standard applied here is the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing, the CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority enforces, together with consumer protection law on misleading omissions. The short version of both is that a reader must be able to tell, before they act, when something is an advertisement. That is the test this page is written against.
Sunscreen claims carry their own constraints on top. SPF and UVA figures on this site refer to what a product was tested to under the relevant standard, never to what a brand says about it, and no commercial arrangement would change that either.
How a change to this page happens
If a commercial relationship of any kind begins, this page is updated before the first monetised link goes live, not after it. The editorial standards page is updated in the same breath. Anything that looks like a commission without a notice on the page is a mistake, and the address on the contact page is the place to tell us so.