1. Ingestion
DealZap pulls product offers continuously from official affiliate networks: Cuelinks, Admitad, Flipkart Affiliate, vCommission. Each offer is normalized into a single deal shape: title, brand, original price, discounted price, image, merchant URL, and an affiliate-tracked redirect URL.
The catalog data foundation (introduced 2026-04-26) extracts a canonical product key from each offer (platform product ID > merchant SKU > slug fallback) so the same product listed on multiple platforms maps to a single canonical record.
2. Scoring
Every deal is scored 0-100 by an AI model that weighs discount depth, brand trust, category demand, rating count, and arithmetic sanity. A separate Deal Quality Agent returns a buy / caution / pass verdict.
Deals scoring below the configured floor (currently 70) are rejected from the pipeline entirely. Deals scoring 80+ are auto-approved. Read the full scoring methodology at /scoring-methodology.
3. Verification
Every approved deal gets re-verified on a freshness SLA (6h to 24h depending on the store). If the URL goes dead or the price drifts materially, the deal is demoted to verification_failed (fresh failure) or stale (failure past SLA). Either state hides the deal from every public surface.
Every deal is re-verified on a schedule after it goes live. Listings that expire, go out of stock, or change materially are pulled from the site quickly, so what you see is what's actually available.
4. Ranking — DealZap Choice
The top 5 approved deals are recomputed hourly into a "DealZap Choice" set. The composite score blends AI score (30%), review strength (25%), 7-day click demand (25%), 7-day conversion signal (15%). Editorial review breaks ties.
"DealZap Choice" is editorial — a tier above "Verified Good Buy". You'll see at most 5 of these on the site at any time.
5. Affiliate Commissions
Every deal click is tracked through a unique tracking code (durable, no 24h expiry). When the buyer completes a purchase on the merchant site, the affiliate network (Cuelinks, etc.) sends DealZap a real-time postback that records the commission. We split it with the deal creator according to their plan and pay out monthly.
Read the affiliate disclosure in the site footer. DealZap participates only in networks where we are formally approved.