V VeritasRequest early access
Use it for

Outdated statistics checker for affiliate sites

An outdated statistics checker for affiliate sites looks at the claims in your copy, not just your links. Veritas re-checks the statistics, dates, comparisons and superlatives on your review and buying-guide pages, and flags the ones that are no longer true.

Request early accessSee how it works

Facts checked 29 October 20267 min readEvery claim sourced

Key takeaways

  • Link checkers find broken links and stock problems, not stale claims in your copy.
  • Amazon's rules limit how prices are shown and forbid inaccurate product claims.
  • Veritas re-checks statistics, dates, comparisons and superlatives; prices belong in a live feed.

Most affiliate audit tools answer one question: does this link still work and is the product in stock? That matters, but a page with perfect links can still quote a survey from four years ago, call a product "the newest model" a generation late, or keep a promotion that ended last month.

This guide covers what goes stale on affiliate and review sites, the rules that make it a business risk (Amazon's, the FTC's and Google's, quoted from their own pages in October 2026), and a refresh routine that splits the work between the right tools.

What goes stale on an affiliate site

Affiliate content ages faster than most, because it describes things that are sold and replaced:

Prices and availability

Change daily, sometimes hourly.

Specs and model generations

"the latest version", storage sizes, battery figures, release years.

Discontinued products

A top pick that can no longer be bought.

Limited-time promotions

Deals and codes that have ended.

"Best X of <year>" titles

The year moves on, and the picks may not have been re-tested.

Statistics roundups

Market sizes, survey results and usage figures quoted from sources that have since published newer editions, or that never gave a source at all.

Comparisons and superlatives

"the cheapest", "the fastest", "the only one with". A competitor's new release breaks the sentence.

The tools that rank for affiliate audits are mostly link checkers, and they are good at their job. AffiliateX's broken link checker runs daily, weekly or monthly scans with email alerts. Affluent's link scanner looks for out-of-stock products. Geniuslink recommends monthly link health checks and a full audit twice a year.

But a working link tells you nothing about the sentence around it. None of these tools reads the copy to see whether a statistic was superseded, a "newest model" claim expired or a superlative stopped being true. That needs a claim-level check.

Link rot is real, and it is worth citing properly. Pew Research Center found in 2024 that 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible a decade later, and that 23% of news pages contained at least one broken link. A good link checker handles that side. The claims in the copy are the part those tools leave out.

The rules that make stale claims a business risk

Amazon Associates. Amazon's program policies set four rules that stale content can break:

  • A site may show prices and availability only through links Amazon serves, or data from its Creators API or Product Advertising API under the license terms.
  • API data other than images may be cached for up to 24 hours, then must be refreshed. If prices refresh less often than hourly, a date and time stamp and a set disclaimer must sit next to them.
  • Inaccurate or misleading claims about any product or its price are forbidden. Amazon's own example is saying a linked phone has more storage than it does.
  • Links to limited-time promotions must be removed as soon as the promotion ends.
The FTC

The FTC revised its Endorsement Guides in June 2023, the first revision since 2009. Its guidance for advertisers says that if you use endorsements that are a few years old, you must make sure the claims are still accurate. The same FAQ says affiliates must disclose the relationship clearly and that endorsers can be liable for misleading statements about a product's performance. It is written for advertisers; how it applies to your site is a question for your counsel.

Google

Google's guidance on writing high quality reviews asks reviewers to describe how a product has evolved from earlier models and to back a "best" pick with first-hand evidence. Both are claims that go stale as products change.

Don't just bump the year in the title

Changing "Best robot vacuums of 2025" to "of 2026" is the most common affiliate refresh. Google's guidance on helpful content asks site owners whether they are changing page dates to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed.

A real refresh re-checks the picks, the specs, the statistics and the comparisons, fixes what changed, and then updates the date. A claim-level check tells you which sentences need work, so the new year in the title is earned.

See which facts on your site have gone out of date.

Request early access

Statistics roundups: the stalest pages on the site

"<Topic> statistics" posts collect errors quickly. Figures are copied from other roundups instead of the original study, the original publishes a newer edition, and the year in the title moves while the numbers don't.

We saw both problems while researching this page: one affiliate guide ranking for this search states a size for the global affiliate industry with no source, and another page dated 2026 repeats software prices from text first written in 2023.

The fix is mechanical but tedious: for each number, find the primary source, check whether a newer release exists, and update the figure and its year. That is exactly the kind of work an outdated statistics checker should do for you.

How Veritas checks the claims in affiliate content

Veritas is an autonomous fact-maintenance agent. It runs in the cloud on a schedule and suits publishers with large archives, including SEO and content teams.

It finds your pages

From sitemaps, sitemap indexes and RSS or Atom feeds, including new and updated posts.

It pulls out checkable claims

Statistics, dates, events, quotes attributed to named people, comparisons and superlatives. Opinion and prediction are skipped.

It searches for evidence outside your own site,

Prefers primary sources such as statistics offices and peer-reviewed papers, and lets you list the source domains you trust.

Each claim gets a verdict

Supported, contradicted, outdated, misleading or unverifiable. "Outdated" means true when published and not now.

Only confident findings reach your queue,

With evidence, citations and a suggested rewrite you can apply in one click. Time-sensitive claims are re-checked on a schedule, and unchanged claims are never re-checked or paid for twice.

Each page gets a health score,

The share of its checked claims that are not problems, so you can pick which buying guides to refresh first.

You control the cost: pages per run, claims per page and the schedule are set per site. For the general approach, see our guide to outdated content detection.

A refresh routine that uses the right tool for each job

Prices and stock

Don't type prices into your copy. Pull them from the network's API or a price-feed plugin that refreshes them for you, and follow Amazon's timestamp rules if you show its prices.

Links

Run a link checker on a schedule (Geniuslink suggests monthly) for broken links, missing tags and out-of-stock products.

Claims in the copy

Let a claim-level checker re-test statistics, dates, comparisons and superlatives, and work the queue weekly, highest-earning pages first.

Promotions

Remove ended deals the day they end; Amazon requires it for limited-time promotions.

Yearly titles

Update the year only after the picks and claims on the page have been re-checked.

Twice a year

A full audit of your top pages, using the health scores to decide where to start.

Honest limitsWhen Veritas isn't the right fit

Live prices and stock levels

Use your network's API or a price-feed plugin. That is what Amazon's rules expect.

Broken links, tags and redirects

A dedicated affiliate link checker does that better.

Disclosure checks

Use a compliance checklist or a disclosure auditing tool.

Pages that need JavaScript to show their text

Veritas reads the HTML a page serves.

Learn more about Veritas or see the teams it is built for.

How Veritas works

  1. Finds your pagesReads your sitemaps, Google News sitemaps and RSS or Atom feeds on a schedule.
  2. Pulls out the claimsStatistics, dates, who holds a role, quotes, events. Opinion is skipped.
  3. Checks the evidenceSearches outside your site and prefers primary sources.
  4. Hands editors the fixConfident findings only, with citations and a one-click rewrite.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find outdated statistics on my affiliate site?

List every number on your top pages with its source and year, check whether the original source has published a newer figure, and update or remove the ones that changed. Veritas automates this by pulling out the statistics on each page, searching for current evidence and flagging the ones that are outdated.

Is an affiliate link checker the same as a content audit?

No. A link checker tells you whether links work and products are in stock. A content audit also checks the claims in your copy: statistics, specs, comparisons, dates and promotions.

Can I show Amazon prices in my articles?

Amazon's program policies allow it only through links Amazon serves or data from its Creators API or Product Advertising API. API data other than images can be cached for up to 24 hours, and prices refreshed less often than hourly need a date and time stamp and a disclaimer. Check the current policies before you rely on this summary.

Should I update the year in "best of" titles?

Only after you have re-checked the picks and the claims on the page. Google's helpful content guidance warns against changing dates to make pages seem fresh when the content hasn't substantially changed.

Does Veritas check product prices?

Veritas checks claims such as statistics, dates, comparisons and superlatives against outside evidence. For live prices and availability, use your affiliate network's API or a price-feed plugin, which is also what Amazon's rules expect.

How often should affiliate content be audited?

Prices should come from a live feed, Geniuslink suggests monthly link checks, and claims in the copy benefit from re-checks on a schedule matched to how fast they change. Veritas re-checks fast-moving claims after 7 days, slowly decaying ones after 45 and stable ones after 365.

Keep every page true

Veritas re-checks the facts across your published pages and hands editors a sourced fix when one goes stale.

Request early access
10 sources, checked 29 October 2026