Research
Who promotes Shopify brands: what 30 scans found, October 2026
Our guides for Shopify brands quote one scan. It was run by our own scanner, not by hand. This page gives its sample, its counts and its limits in one place, so each guide can stay short. The guides are for Shopify Collabs and UpPromote. The scan ran on 22 October 2026 through our own RecruitAffiliates.ai account.
What did we scan?
We scanned 30 public Shopify brands. We picked them by hand from our outbound list, 6 in each of five categories: fashion and apparel, health and supplements, beauty and skincare, fitness and sports, and home and garden. Each category had three UK brands and three US brands. We left out brands that had already received our first two outbound emails.
Sales of $25k to $250k a month are the list's own estimate, and we didn't check them. The UK brands sit at $25k to $100k and the US brands at $100k to $250k. So country and size move together. Don't compare the UK with the US as if only the country differs.
How did we count?
We added each brand with 2 rivals and 3 topics typed by hand. Then we ran the product's normal first search. It found 5,537 candidates. Its own filter hid 2,613 of them. The other 2,924 were shown, and those are the counts on our guides.
A new brand copies its settings from the brand it is added from. That was our own. So every brand was searched in the same six countries (GB, IE, US, CA, AU, NZ), with our offer, not the brand's real offer. Read the counts as what a first search returns, not what a tuned setup would return.
What did we find?
| Category (six shops each) | People shown | With a review or roundup page | With an email on record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health and supplements | 126 | 62 | 38 |
| Beauty and skincare | 100 | 72 | 34 |
| Fitness and sports | 94 | 58 | 25 |
| Home and garden | 92 | 64 | 31 |
| Fashion and apparel | 78 | 47 | 30 |
We ran this · 22 October 2026
A first scan showed a median of 92 people per Shopify brand.
- Health and supplements showed the most people (126). Fashion and apparel showed the fewest (78).
- Beauty and skincare had the most with a review or roundup page (72).
The chart draws the medians in the table above. The screenshots below are real first searches. Full method and limits.
Each cell is the median of six shops, rounded. Across all 30 shops the median was 92 people shown, from 35 to 188. In all, 1,877 of 2,924 people (64%) had a review, roundup or comparison page as their best evidence. Blog-style pages were 573 (20%) and podcasts 399 (14%). TikTok gave 49 people, Instagram 17 and newsletters 9.
An email address was on record for 916 of 2,924 people (31%). Those are addresses found. The scan stopped there and ran no email checks. The product runs them when a campaign starts (what each result means).
What does a first search look like?
Three real first searches from the scan. They are among the larger results.
How good were the results?
An AI model read the page title and address of 30 random rows. We opened none of the pages. 19 were a clear fit for the brand's category and 2 a loose fit. 9 were not promoters (30%, with a likely range of 17% to 48%). They included a national broadcaster, a government health site and another brand's own site.
The coupon-site flag is unreliable. It flagged 1 row in the sample, and that row was wrong. It also reads "deals" in ordinary reviews. So we don't quote it.
"Review site" is a label on the page, not on the publisher. About 8 of the review-labelled rows in the 30-row check were single-post bloggers.
What can't these numbers tell you?
- No email checks ran. We found addresses and stopped. The product checks them when a campaign starts.
- One run on one day. Counts move with the search sources.
- A small, hand-picked sample. Six brands a category isn't random, so medians are rough.
- We did not test who is on Collabs. The scan finds people on the open web. It doesn't say whether any of them has a Collabs profile.
- Page types are rough labels. Blog, review and podcast come from the page type and address.
Questions people ask
How sure are you about the 30-row check?
In the 30-row check, 19 rows were a clear fit, 2 a loose fit and 9 were not promoters (likely range 17% to 48%). With 30 rows the range is wide, so read it as a rough guide.
Did the scan check the emails?
The scan did not. It counted addresses found on record and stopped. The product runs its checks when a campaign starts (what each result means). So we make no claim here about how many addresses work.
Can I run this on my own store?
Yes. A free trial of RecruitAffiliates.ai runs the same first search on your store. It is 7 days with no card.
Does the scan show who is on Shopify Collabs?
No. It shows people found on the open web who cover shops like yours. Whether they join a Collabs programme is a separate step.