How GetAff finds relevant partners for your program

1. Check what the search is looking for

The panel “What we are looking for” is derived from your site and your program: when GetAff analyses the site, it proposes keywords, niches and markets. You adjust the chips, then run the search. Once you save an edit, the context is yours: a later analysis no longer overwrites it, and “Back to the derived context” restores it.

• Keywords (up to 10) — what the creators you want talk about.
• Niches (up to 6) — categories derived from the keywords.
• Platforms — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and podcasts.
• Countries (up to 10) and languages (up to 4) — empty means worldwide and any language.
• Audience — nano (1k–5k), micro (5k–50k), mid-tier (50k–250k), macro (250k–1M), mega (1M+). The default, micro plus mid-tier, is where affiliate creators convert for the price.
• Last post — within 30, 90 or 365 days, or any time. 90 days by default.

2. Read the topic terms

A keyword list is not enough to judge relevance: “budget” means something else to a wedding planner and to a personal-finance channel. For each program, GetAff generates a set of topic terms — words, phrases and hashtags in the program’s languages — plus negative terms for off-topic look-alikes. The panel “Terms used” shows them.

• Remove a term that should not count as a match.
• Mark a term off-topic: creators who use it are penalised.
• Restore a term you removed by mistake.
• Accept or ignore the suggestions GetAff draws from your shortlist.

Every correction applies to the next search. When the AI is unavailable, the terms are derived from your own keywords, and the panel says so.

3. One search, four sources

“Run the search” queries every source at once and merges the answers into one deduplicated list. The “Sources” line shows what each one returned, or why it did not answer.

• GetAff index — the pooled index of public creator profiles, ranked for your program.
• Similar to my shortlist — lookalikes of the creators you already selected. It needs a shortlist whose creators are in the index.
• Competitor promoters — public creators whose videos link to, or give a coupon for, the competitors you listed (up to 5 domains, on the competitors page of Find). A lookup takes up to two minutes; two runs an hour at most.
• Live search — on the Pro plan, CreatorDB is queried live on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. It spends credits (about one per platform), always after a confirmation that shows the estimate, within 30 live searches a day.

4. How the ranking works

Results are not sorted by audience. They are sorted by evidence that the creator fits your program, in this order:

1. Relevance tier. A creator is relevant when their OWN words — name, handle, bio, hashtags — mention one of your program’s topics, or when they promote a competitor, or when they resemble your shortlist. A profile written in a script none of your languages uses goes to the bottom.
2. Evidence. Within the relevant tier, a proven competitor promoter and a creator who describes your topic in their own words come before a lookalike or a match that rests only on a provider’s tags.
3. Coverage. A creator who matches your main topic and several secondary ones ranks above one who matches a single facet.
4. Fit score. The 0–100 score (market, language, audience, recent activity) breaks the ties between creators of equal relevance.

The screen groups results as “Highly relevant”, “Relevant”, “Check” and “Outside markets”. Off-topic results are hidden by default; you can show them in one click.

5. Ask why a creator ranks there

Each card has a “Why this creator” panel listing at most four reasons, strongest first: the topic terms it matched (or “found via” a provider hashtag), the market, the language, the reach, recent activity, “Promotes <competitor>” and “Close to your shortlist”. For a competitor promoter, “See the evidence” opens the public proof: the video link or the coupon code.

If a reason looks wrong, fix its cause rather than the result: mark the term off-topic, remove a country, narrow the audience, then run the search again. The same explanation is available to an assistant through the MCP tool explain_ranking.

6. Saved searches

Every search is saved with its results, free or paid, whether it ran from the screen, the chat, the API or MCP. “Searches” lists them, pinned first then newest; you can reopen one without running it again or spending credits — a paid run is marked “Already paid”.

• Pin the searches you come back to, rename them, delete the rest.
• Compare: each saved search shows how many creators it adds or removes against the one on screen.
• Retention: up to 50 searches per site, kept 90 days — 30 days when they contain rows from a paid provider, whose terms require it.

7. From results to a shortlist

“Shortlist” on a card adds the creator to “My shortlist” (up to 100). Keyboard users can move with the arrows or j / k and select with x. From the shortlist, “Add to partners” creates the prospects, “Find e-mails” looks up missing addresses (Pro, with the cost shown first) and “Write a sequence” opens outreach.

What happens next — contacting, follow-ups, stages and the person record — is the subject of From creator to partner. If you prefer to drive the same search from an assistant or a script, see the MCP article and the API reference.