What's new, and when it went live.
Each feature and fix you'd notice, newest first, dated the day it reached the site.
- Latest
- 19 Oct
- Updates
- 33
- New features
- 23
- Since
- 16 Oct
- 12 updates
- New
Client reports
On the Agency plan, each brand now has a Reports tab. Pick a period (last month, the month before, or the last 7 or 30 days), add a note to your client if you like, and Godotoro makes a report of it: the other advertisers on the brand's searches and which are new, ads showing its address, where its codes were listed, marks against your rules, the evidence packs you made and the alerts it raised, each against the period before, with the searches behind them. Its numbers are fixed when it's made and match the brand page for the same days, and codes stay masked. Share it by a private link that works for 13 months, or less if you choose, download it as a PDF, or withdraw it. The cover and foot carry your name and logo, set once on the workspace's People tab, and if you switch on monthly reports there, last month's report for every brand is made by itself at 07:00 on the 1st and an alert tells your channels it's ready.
See it - New
The read API
On the Agency plan, a workspace's owners and admins can make API keys on its new API tab and read what the workspace holds from their own tools: its brands and keywords, a brand's figures for 7, 30 or 90 days (the same as its page), every ad seen as the CSV has it, alerts, marks, codes (masked), evidence packs and client reports, each with its link. It only reads, never starts a search, and a key sees its own workspace and nothing else. Every call, with an example request and answer, is documented at /docs/api, with an OpenAPI file for your tools.
See it - Improved
Move around a brand's report
A brand's report now has a bar of links to its sections under its opening: who's bidding, ads showing the address, where its codes are, every check run and the next steps. Once you scroll past the opening it stays under the menu, marks the section you're reading, and takes you back to the top in one press. A link to a section, like a report's checks, now opens on it. The same bar is on a workspace's brand pages.
See it - Improved
Your workspace, laid out as an app
A workspace now opens on an overview of the last 7 days: one card per brand, the brand with the most new first, with the other advertisers on its searches, advertisers whose search ads show its address, the code sites listing its codes, and open marks against your rules, each with what's new this week, and the latest five alerts beside them. A new workspace gets a short list of first steps, each ticked from what it holds. Each brand's keywords come with up to eight suggestions, like its name with sale or student discount, added in one click. Every signed-in page now opens with a compact header and tabs (Overview, Brands and keywords, Alerts, People for a workspace; Report, Rules, Partners, Codes, Evidence and Alerts for a brand), so what you came for sits above the fold, they hold their shape while they load, and none of them scrolls sideways on a phone.
See it - New
This week in UK brand search
A public page each week of what Google UK showed on the brand searches we watch: how often another advertiser's ad appeared, who the ads came from by kind, the stores with the most advertisers on their searches, advertisers seen only out of hours, ads showing a store's address, and how widely stores' codes were listed. Stores and counts only, never an advertiser. Each figure says what it means and links the lesson or guide behind it. Until a store has enough searches in the week so far, the page shows the latest full week. Finished weeks are kept as they were at /weeks, with a feed.
See it - New
What others' ads on your brand cost
A third free tool works out what other advertisers' ads on your brand's discount code searches come to, from your own numbers: the orders that reach you through them each month, what those orders were worth and the commission paid on them, and, if you add your own click prices, what others' bidding adds to your clicks. Every line shows its sum, the year's total sits beside a range for when a quarter, half or three quarters of those orders would have come anyway, and the click share starts from a named study you can change. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent. A brand page's Who's bidding opens it with the share of searches where another advertiser was seen already filled in. Six new guides go with it, on working out the cost, why brand plus discount code searches matter, matching an ad to a partner, reading About this advertiser, reading impression share when others bid, and watching your searches at night and at weekends, with seven new glossary terms.
See it - New
Evidence packs and notices
From a mark under your rules, or a place one of your private codes turned up, a workspace can now build an evidence pack: what we saw, when and where, with a picture of each sighting's ads taken from the results page Google served at the time (the ad in question outlined, the rest of the page left out), your own rule quoted, and the advertiser's details. Share it by a private link that lasts 90 days, or as long as you choose up to 13 months, download it as a PDF, and withdraw the link whenever you like. Each pack also drafts the notices to the partner and to its network's compliance team, for you to send from your own email, and lists what Google's trademark complaint form asks for, filled in where we know the answer. We never send or submit anything for you, and codes stay masked throughout.
See it - New
Godotoro in your AI assistant
Add Godotoro to Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Cursor as an MCP server and your assistant can find a store and read its brand page as the public page shows it, read the University's lessons, the guides and the glossary, and build negative keywords and paid-search terms, with no sign-in. Add the sign-in address instead and, once you've approved it on Godotoro, it can also read brand pages in full, run checks from your own 20 a day, trace links and list your recent checks. Every answer links to its page here and codes stay masked. An assistant learns nothing about you beyond your checks, and you can disconnect it from your account at any time. /mcp has the steps for each one.
See it - New
Your codes and where they go
A workspace can now register each brand's discount codes, one by one or from a CSV of up to 5,000 rows, say which are private and who each was given to, and see where every one has been listed. Adding a code looks back over the last 90 days of the 15 coupon extensions and voucher sites and the brand's search ads. From then on, the first time a private code shows up on one of them or in an ad, an alert says where and when. Each code keeps its history: which providers list it or listed it, first and last seen, uses and success rate where the provider gives them, and the ads that quoted it. Check a code tells any member whether a code is one of yours and where it's been seen. Codes are shown masked everywhere, your workspace included.
See it - New
Your rules and partners
A workspace can now save its paid-search rules for each brand it covers, starting from the free terms builder's choices, and keep who has permission and its publisher list, added one by one or from a network's CSV. Every search after that is read against those rules: an advertiser whose ads don't fit them is marked on the brand's page with what we saw and when, and with the partner it's probably from where your list names one. "Check the last 30 days" looks back once, on request. Only your workspace sees any of it, and an alert can tell you when a new mark appears. Under the terms builder, "Use these rules in a workspace" carries your choices over; they stay in your browser until you save them.
See it - New
Guides and a glossary
Twelve step-by-step guides on the jobs behind a brand's searches: finding who bids on your name, reading the Ads Transparency Center and Auction insights, checking your search without skewing your ads, reading an affiliate link, reporting an ad to Google, the paid-search rules and negative keywords to ask affiliates for, and finding where your codes are listed. Each one names Google's own reports and forms and cites its sources. The glossary gives 47 of the trade's terms a page each, every University lesson links to them, and each free tool's page now lists the guides that use it.
See it - New
Alerts for workspaces
A workspace now hears when something changes on its brands: a new bidder on their searches, a new advertiser showing their address, a steady bidder taking the first ad position, or one of their codes listed somewhere it wasn't. Alerts go to Slack or a signed webhook, at once or in a digest at 08:00 London time, and quiet hours hold them overnight. Each alert keeps its evidence, what was seen and when, with codes masked. Email to members who opt in follows once sending is switched on.
See it
- New
- 11 updates
- Improved
From a brand page to its negative keywords
Under "Who's bidding" on a brand page, a new line hands you the brand's negative keyword list: press Build the list and the negative keywords tool opens with the brand's name and address already in.
See it - Fixed
The top bar on a phone
On a phone, the "Check a brand" button in the top bar sat over the Godotoro name. Below 600 pixels wide the bar now shows the name and the menu, as it was meant to; Check a brand is in the menu.
- New
Free tools: paid-search rules and negative keywords
Two new tools at /tools, free and with no sign-up, that run entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent to us. The paid-search terms builder takes your brand's names and addresses and your choices on brand bidding, your brand with words like "discount code", negative keywords, direct linking, your address and your names in ads, and gives you numbered clauses to paste into your programme's terms, or download. Negative keywords takes the same names and addresses and lists the negatives to ask affiliates for: the names, their spacings and punctuation, misspellings with a letter dropped, doubled or swapped, and your web addresses as people type them, in phrase, exact or broad match, to copy or download as CSV. /tools also lists Check a brand and Trace a link.
See it - New
Trace a link
Paste an affiliate link, a short link or a voucher site's link and see every hop on the way: each redirect and how it moved on, the affiliate networks it passed through with the publisher and programme IDs in it, the cookies set (by name, never their values), the final address and a screenshot of the page it lands on. We follow up to twenty hops or thirty seconds from our own servers. Ad click links are refused, because following one would click the ad and charge its advertiser. Each trace has its own page to share, kept for ninety days.
See it - New
The address check
Signed in, you can run an address check from the "Ads showing your address" section of a store's page. It looks up afresh which advertisers Google's Ads Transparency Centre lists for ads showing the store's address, then reads each one that doesn't share the store's name: its ads for that address, with their format and when each was first and last shown, how many ads it has in the United Kingdom across every site, and the other stores in our map whose addresses its ads also show. It waits in the queue like any check and emails you when it's done. You can run three a day. Signed out, the section shows the counts for its first advertisers.
See it - Improved
Search ads and Shopping ads, apart
Ads showing your address now counts only advertisers with search ads. Advertisers whose ads for your address are all Shopping (product) ads, often comparison shopping services placing your products, are listed apart in a fold under them, with their own count, on the brand page, in the live check and in the emails. An advertiser that paid for a text ad on your brand's searches always counts. A store's split shows from its next lookup; until then everyone stays with search.
- Improved
Pages sit in a narrower column on wide screens
On a screen wider than about 1,450 pixels, every page's words, panels and navigation now line up in one centred column 1,440 pixels across, so they no longer stretch to the far edges. The lights behind them still run the full width. Smaller screens look as before.
- New
Workspaces, in early access
A workspace covers the brands you choose, every hour or every 2 hours, and searches your own keywords alongside the public ones, such as the brand's name with student discount. Its brand pages read back up to 13 months, filter by query, kind of advertiser and time of day, and download every sighting in view as a CSV. Your keywords, and what their searches show, are seen by your workspace only. Invite your team as owners, admins or members. Workspaces are in early access: ask us for one.
See it - Improved
The opening says what the site is
The first time the home page opens, the G now slides aside for a line beside it: free brand tools, and the comprehensive guide to brand protection. It reads for a moment, then the page comes up as before. It doesn't play with reduced motion or when you come back to the home page from another page.
See it - New
Checks wait in the queue, and tell you when they're done
A check that can't finish in half a minute no longer gives up. Its sections say Queued, and if capture is offline, since when; the page fills in by itself while it's open. Signed in, we email you once when it's done, and you can switch that off on the check. Your account has a new page listing every check you've run in the last 90 days and where each one stands. You can have five checks waiting at once.
See it - New
The University
A free course on how affiliate marketing and brand search work: fourteen lessons in three modules, from how a sale gets credited to reading the live check, each with the Google help pages behind it. Eight short films show the ways a brand's affiliate or paid-search traffic can end up somewhere unexpected and where each shows in your own reports. They play one after another, with chapters and captions. It's about noticing what happens and asking a clear question, never about blame.
See it
- Improved
- 4 updates
- New
The live check, explained
Each part of the live check now has a ? beside its title. Press it for what the part shows, how to read its tags and figures, and where the data comes from and how often. A two-minute film plays a check from start to finish, with captions: press "Watch the explainer" under the search, "How it works" in the check's bar, or the card that comes up in the corner as you scroll.
See it - Improved
Why the tools are free
The home page now explains why I'm building free tools for affiliate transparency, the questions the checker helps brands answer and how we gather and share the evidence.
See it - New
A page for every brand
Each store we check now has its own page at /brand/ and its address. It shows who bid on each search over 7, 30 or 90 days with a mark for every check, the ads each of them ran, the advertisers showing the store's address and when each was first listed, every code across providers with who lists it now and who listed it before, and every check behind it all. Signed out, each section shows its first rows and how many more there are.
See it - Fixed
Codes kept out of ad and offer text
Some ads and voucher listings write a discount code into their own text. Those codes are now masked wherever they appear, as they already were in the code lists.
- New
- 6 updates
- New
Who paid for each ad
Each ad now says who paid for it, from Google's own “About this advertiser”, and links to that advertiser's ads on Google's Ads Transparency Center. When Google shows an affiliate network's address for the click, we name the network. Every sweep now searches the brand's bare name too, not only its voucher searches.
- Improved
Checks in seconds
A signed-in check now runs on its own lane, so it comes back in seconds even while a scheduled sweep is running.
- New
The check plays out on the home page
A new look for the whole site, and a check now runs on the home page itself: the ads laid out as a results page, each provider's codes with when they last worked, and a button through to the full report. Each advertiser showing a store's address links to its ads on Google's Ads Transparency Center.
See it - New
Out of office hours
Discount-code searches now run every 4 hours, midnight and 4am included. Each search is counted as office hours, out of hours or night, and an advertiser seen only outside office hours is marked with a moon.
- New
Free accounts
Sign in with Google, no password needed. A free account gets 20 checks a day and everything we hold for a brand; without one, 2 checks a day.
See it - New
The free brand checker
Type a store's address and see who bid on its voucher, discount and promo code searches on Google UK, which advertisers Google's Ads Transparency Center lists for its address, and which of 15 coupon extensions and voucher sites list its codes. No sign-up needed.
See it
- New