What primary facts and dated evidence should a referral-program proof page publish?
Publish the facts that decide whether an introducer gets paid, each traced to a versioned primary document. Then publish what you do not know, labeled as such.
A partner reading a program page is trying to answer three questions: what am I paid on, when am I paid, and who decides. An AI answer engine summarizing the same page is trying to extract the same three answers without misreading them. Both are served by the same discipline: short declarative statements, one fact per line, each with a source a reader can open.
Google's documentation for its AI features is blunt about mechanics: a page needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet, and there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That shifts the effort from markup to content. Google's helpful-content guidance asks whether a page provides original information, reporting, research or analysis, and asks publishers to be clear about who produced content and how. A proof page answers those questions by design.
The fact ledger: what each row must carry
This is the evidence asset for this page: a ledger of SourceX's own program facts, each with the fields a reader or a crawler needs to trust it.
| Fact | Current value | Primary source | Owner | Version | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reward base | the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Floor and repeats | The USD 50,000 element applies once per referred company, on its first qualifying transaction; further qualifying transactions first agreed within the 12-month Repeat Window pay 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| What the base excludes | Rewards are a share of the compensation SourceX actually pays the company you referred (the Actual Supplier Payout), with no cap per referred company, subject to the program terms. SourceX pays rewards separately; they never reduce the company's payout. | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Payment trigger | A reward becomes payable after SourceX has paid the referred company under its signed agreement and the payout conditions in the program terms are met, including finance approval and your tax and payment details. | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Payment deadline | 60 days after the later of the Acquisition Partner’s final written acceptance and completed handoff | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Attribution | First valid introduction within the 90-day window, credited when the company submits a verified application | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Company eligibility | 50+ full-time employees at peak, documented operating history, rights to license, authorized contact | /terms | SourceX program terms | v2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Reward statuses | Estimated, Eligible, Approved, Processing, Paid | /rewards | SourceX rewards page | Page as checked | 2026-10-18 |
| Conversion rate | Not yet published | None | SourceX partner operations | Not applicable | 2026-10-18 |
Three rules make the ledger useful. First, the "Current value" cell paraphrases nothing that changes meaning: "the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout" is not the same as "the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of the deal". Second, the version column ties every fact to a document a reader can compare, so a stale summary elsewhere is easy to spot. Third, the last row exists on purpose. A blank written as "Not yet published" is evidence too: it tells the reader not to trust a number they find quoted somewhere else.
Separate company compensation from the referral reward
The single most common misreading of referral pages is treating the partner's reward as a slice of the company's money. A proof page should state both amounts on separate lines and say who pays each.
| Line | Who pays it | Illustrative amount |
|---|---|---|
| Actual Supplier Payout to the company | SourceX, under the company's own agreement | $250,000 |
| Reward to the introducing partner | SourceX, funded separately | $62,500 |
| Amount deducted from the company's payout | Nobody | $0 |
Illustrative only: a 260-person logistics firm with an Actual Supplier Payout of $250,000 would generate a reward of $62,500 (the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15%). It is not a quote, a forecast or a completed deal. At $400,000 the reward would be $70,000, and at $800,000 it would be $120,000 (15% of the payout), because the program has no cap; the USD 50,000 floor applies once per company, on its first qualifying transaction. The reward calculation explainer shows the same arithmetic, and when a reward becomes payable lists the conditions in order.
How should dates and corrections appear?
Show one "Last updated" date near the top, keep it consistent with any structured date, and keep a short correction log at the bottom. Google's byline-date guidance recommends a prominent date labeled, for example, "Published" or "Last updated", and visible and structured dates that agree.
A correction log entry needs four fields: date, what was wrong, what it says now, and which source changed. An illustrative entry, in the format we recommend:
| Date | Field | Was | Now | Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illustrative entry | Company eligibility | Superseded wording (hypothetical) | 50+ full-time employees at peak | Terms version change |
The log protects partners who already quoted the old wording to a client: they can see exactly when it changed and point to the version that applied.
Which companies does the evidence describe?
The proof page should state eligibility once, verbatim, and link to the screening detail rather than paraphrasing it across many pages. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English.
Beyond geography, the introduced company needs 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), a documented operating history, rights to license the records and an authorized contact. A partner can check most of this at metadata level: which systems hold the records, roughly how many years they span, whether client contracts restrict reuse, and which executive could open a licensing conversation. Partners never ask for or handle raw records. What stays unknown until SourceX reviews the company: whether there is current dataset demand for those records, the rights review result, any offer and therefore any reward. Partners working across borders can compare notes in the guide for global partners.
Limits: what a proof page should not claim
Publishing evidence also means refusing to publish non-evidence. A program proof page should not:
- quote averages, conversion rates or typical rewards that come from no defined cohort;
- describe a lead, meeting or signature as a payment event;
- present a competitor's headline cap as proof of higher expected earnings, since the calculation base and trigger matter as much as the cap;
- imply buyer relationships it cannot document.
Where a reader needs a definition first, link out: what a referral program is and the rewards page carry the general explanation, so the proof page can stay a ledger.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
If the ledger answers your questions, register as a partner, check the company against who qualifies, and keep the versioned program terms as your reference when you describe the program to a client. More guides sit in the guides hub.