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Brand-name pages on open platforms
Anyone can publish a page on a code repository, a note-taking service or a help center. We counted how often such pages appear in Google for brand names. 40 igaming and crypto brands, August 3 to October 6, 2026.
of all results for one exchange's name were pages on open platforms: 2,436 of 19,775
help centers on one support platform appeared in Google for the names of 10 brands. Their pages offer referral and promo codes
brands had an app-store listing in Google's top 10 for their name. It can be the brand's own app or a copy
Pages with referral and promo codes, by platform type
11 of 40 brands, 4,389 results
| Platform type | Results | In the top 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Code repositories | 2,210 | 223 |
| Help centers | 1,525 | 572 |
| Research networks | 321 | 84 |
| Document platforms | 214 | 36 |
| Blog platforms | 98 | 11 |
| Note services | 21 | 0 |
Referral-code pages, share of all results2026
Exchange 16.3%
Exchange 25.5%
Exchange 34.5%
35 casinos0.1%
Help centers have fewer such pages than code repositories, but their pages appear higher. 38% of them were in the top 10. For crypto exchanges, these pages are 36 times more common than for casinos. The DeFi protocol in our sample had none: it has no referral program.
Four open platforms above the brand's own site
- “brand bonus”
- South Korea
- 2026-08-19
- positions 2–5
- 2 · help center
- 3 · code repository
- 4 · research network
- 5 · code repository
- 6 · the brand's own site
This is a desktop search in South Korea. Each of the four pages offers someone's referral code. The customer was looking for the brand, and the page puts someone else's code into the sign-up.
Why a button check misses these pages
There is often nothing to click
A button check asks where a button leads. A page with a referral code often has no such button: the code is in the text. We find these pages in search results, not by clicking.
We remove the page, not the platform
The code repository or help center itself works as usual. We file a complaint with the platform about the one page. We also remove the page from Google search by its URL.
Verified accounts for sale
One exchange had 15 sites and 150 results that sell verified accounts. Some of these ads were on document and video platforms. This is a way around identity checks (KYC), so it is a regulatory risk.
App-store listings
For 16 brands, an app-store listing ranked first on Google for their name. It can be your app or a copy. We check each listing and remove a copy with a complaint to the store.
Parasite pages & hacked sites → · All channels and timelines →
How we collected the data
Sample
- 40 brands in igaming and crypto, 89 countries.
- 22,095 Google searches with a brand name: 14,177 on desktop and 7,918 on mobile. In each one, we checked the first 100 results, 602,183 results in total.
- We sorted the results by platform type. A referral-code page has “referral”, “promo code”, “bonus code” or “invite code” in its title or URL. We also check these words in local languages.
- App-store listings: 32 brands. We have recorded them separately since August 18, 2026.
- This is a snapshot as of the dates we checked. Google changes its results every day.
What is not included
- We could not get the results of 2,334 searches. They are not in the count, and we do not count them as “clean”.
- Russia is not included: our tool does not cover it.
- Video platforms and forums are not in these counts. We check them separately.
- We counted pages by their title and URL. Some may belong to your own affiliates, so we check each page before a complaint.
- We did not count the brands' own help centers and code pages. We also left out other organizations with the same name.
- We do not name brands or sites.
Method → · All open reports → · The same check for your brand, free →
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