In our recent July blog, we shared how our team is fully dedicated to keeping Kit a safe, trusted place for sharing the products you love and recommend.
As a continuation of our efforts to remove spam content, and as a major step towards maintaining the quality of content on Kit, today we’re announcing a change to how links are shared on Kit.
Read on to learn more about what’s changed, or click this link to request approval for a new retailer now.
What do we mean by spam content?
Kit exists as a free platform for sharing the products you personally use and recommend, based on the simple concept of sharing “what’s in your Kit”?
This means that Kit is intended for sharing products – items that other people can purchase at your recommendation, and appreciate for themselves.
Unfortunately, over time that message has become unclear. Some accounts are misusing Kit by using the platform as free advertising for sites and services they sell, or as a place to re-host links to pirated or malicious content.
This spam content not only goes against the spirit of what Kit is about, but it is also harmful to the rest of our community. Malicious content tarnishes the reputation that we have all worked so hard to build over the years, negatively impacting conversions for our valid users.
Additionally, (as you may have noticed) the growing amount of spam content has become a drag on site performance. The numerous, (and oftentimes worthless) spam kits are slowing things down for everyone who is using Kit in a constructive way.
As on any platform, the spam on Kit cheapens the experience of using the site, and we want to change that by doing what we can to address the problem head-on. As such, we’ve decided to make a major change to how sharing product links on Kit works.
What’s changing?
Starting today, Kit will begin enforcing a new “Trusted Retailers” filter, which will limit which destinations/domains can be shared on Kit.
The goal of this change is to significantly reduce the inappropriate content we were seeing on Kit. We recognize that this solution may be seen as drastic, but after careful consideration we feel it’s the best path forward to reduce the existing abusive content and the potential for further abuse of the platform, while balancing our operational costs.
In this first iteration of the Trusted Retailers rollout, the platform will only allow users to link to “trusted” retailers, as defined by the Kit team. This solution will help ensure that no malicious users are abusing Kit outside of the community guidelines we have laid out for the platform, while also reducing some of the need for continual monitoring from our team.
Rest assured, most MAJOR retailers will still be supported! Besides the 30 retailers Kit currently supports automatic affiliation for, we’ve already approved almost 2,500 other online retailers, to help ensure that your preferred, high quality retailers can still be shared on the Kit platform. We plan to continue growing this list of approved retailers, but we need your help curating high quality, trusted storefronts!
If you’re curious about whether an existing domain/retailer is supported on Kit.co, please check out the full list here, (You may want to Ctrl + F to quickly find what you’re looking for)
Please note that the above spreadsheet is representative of our CURRENT list of approved retailers – going forward (at the time of this blog announcement) we will be maintaining a new list using Upvoty, a feature request tool linked below. Please check this list if you do not see your requested retailer in the above spreadsheet. (Click on Retailer Status to see an overview of all submissions)
What does this mean for you?
One of the things you may notice now is a new error message when trying to add a product link saying “Sorry, this destination is not currently supported on Kit.co”
Don’t panic! This is expected if you’re linking to a merchant we haven’t seen before, or have yet to officially review or approve.
In order for a previously unapproved or new domain to be shared on Kit, you simply need to fill out the below form, and submit the request to our team. Once we have verified that the retailer does not pose a risk to the platform, we’ll approve the domain for sharing on Kit.
To submit a request for approval of a retailer, please use this form.
Moving forward
We love the diverse community that uses Kit and are excited to learn about new merchants, brands, and retailers selling quality products that need to be shared. With this new filtering, we fully expect to receive a lot of requests. Here is how we plan to deal with the wave of requests in as timely of fashion as possible.
- We plan to review all request submissions approximately once per week, and will update our Trusted Retailers list once the requests have been reviewed and approved/disapproved.
- The approved retailers will then be updated in our database and going forward, links to products from that retailer, using the approved domain of the retailer, will be approved for linking within Kits.
- After submitting a request, please check the Retailer Status page to see if your requested retailer has been approved.
Note: When looking at the “Trusted Retailers” Spreadsheet, you may notice that we have individual rows for different variations of retailer hostnames (such as ebay.co.uk, ebay.com, ebay.com.au, etc).You DO NOT need to submit multiple requests for each domain variation or TLD – simply submit a request for the primary domain of the retailer you are requesting (ie. eBay.com) and our team will make sure to approve all other related domains/hostnames for that retailer.
FAQ
Q. How do I know if my retailer request has been approved?
A. Please check the Trusted Retailers list. We will update this list as often as we can, and will either approve or reject submissions depending on the retailer reputation/product categories.
Q. None of the retailers in my niche are approved, what do I do?
A. First, submit a request using the above form. We have tried our best to get a well rounded list of approved retailers in our initial list, but there may very well be some retailers that we have missed. If after submitting a request, the retailer has still not been approved, feel free to contact our team at help@kit.co, and we’ll be happy to discuss the use-case for it.
Q. What happens to my existing links if they are no longer approved?
A. We will NOT be removing existing content from your account, even if the previously shared links are no longer on our “Trusted Retailers” list. However, you will no longer be able to link to these destinations for new items, so feel free to submit a request for that retailer, or consider switching to a supported retailer who sells the products you use.
Q. Can I submit multiple requests?
A. Absolutely, but be aware of the time it takes for our team to review these requests. If you submit too many requests at once, we may prioritize requests from other users.
Of course, if you have any other questions or concerns about this change, or want to appeal a decision about a particular retailer, feel free to contact us at help@kit.co