Sponsored content at CercaClaro

In short: right now CercaClaro carries no sponsored content or advertising at all — everything you see in search and on listings is organic. Once we do launch advertising, every paid placement will carry a «Patrocinado» (Sponsored) label, sit in its own slot separate from organic results, match the filters you’ve applied, and never change any professional’s ranking or verification status. Affiliate links (for example, on activity bookings) will be marked just as clearly.

Where things stand today: no sponsored placements

As of this page, CercaClaro sells and shows no sponsored results, banners or paid featured listings. Every professional you find through search and on services is there on relevance, verification and how complete their profile is — not because they’ve paid. If we do switch on advertising, we’ll update this page with the date of the change before the first sponsored result goes live.

What “sponsored” will mean here

Once advertising launches, “sponsored” will cover two distinct things, each labelled on its own terms:

• Sponsored listings or results: a professional pays for placement in an ad slot alongside search results or on a service page, without that purchase affecting their position in the organic listing.
• Affiliate links: outbound links — for example, to third-party booking platforms for activities or experiences — through which we may earn a commission if you complete a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

Neither is an editorial recommendation dressed up as an ad. Our methodology and editorial policy explain how we decide what to show, independently of any commercial arrangement.

How it will be labelled

Every sponsored result, featured listing or affiliate link will carry the word “Sponsored” (or “Affiliate link” where relevant) visible next to it, in the same type size as the surrounding content — not tiny grey print at the foot of the page. The label appears before you click, not after. This follows the same identifiable-commercial-communication principle set out in article 20 of Spain’s LSSI (its e-commerce law) and the ban on covert advertising in article 26 of the Unfair Competition Act, which since 2022 explicitly covers search results shaped by an undisclosed payment.

Where it can appear, and where it can’t

Sponsored slots, when they exist, will live in their own blocks — for instance, a distinct strip at the top or side of a results page, or a marked listing within a category. They will never be inserted:

• Inside a professional’s verification panel, as if part of their checked, factual data.
• In place of a better-ranked organic result, without that result still being visible further down the same page.
• Within a guide or editorial article without being typographically distinct from the rest of the text.

Sponsorship never touches organic ranking or verification

This is the core promise of this page: paying doesn’t buy position or a badge. The order of organic results in search depends on a professional’s verification status, how complete their profile is, and how well it matches your search; “verified” status follows the process set out in our verification policy, unrelated to any commercial relationship. A professional who pays for a sponsored slot doesn’t move up a single place in the organic listing because of it, and one who pays nothing doesn’t lose position either.

This lines up with Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, the P2B Regulation, which requires platforms to explain the main parameters behind their ranking and, specifically, whether payment can influence it. Our answer is that it can’t: organic ranking and sponsored slots are separate systems.

Search results and recommender-style features

If the site ever uses automatic ordering or suggestion of listings — for instance, “recommended professionals” within a category — the criteria behind it (verification, profile completeness, geographic and service match) will be set out in the methodology, in the same spirit of transparency the Digital Services Act (DSA) asks of recommender systems under article 27, even though CercaClaro isn’t a large platform subject to the DSA’s full obligations.

Affiliate links

Where we use affiliate links — for example, to third-party booking platforms for activities or experiences tied to a guide — the link will carry the word “affiliate” or an equivalent note beside it, showing that we may earn a commission from the destination platform if you complete a booking through it. The price you pay doesn’t change because you used that link. We never turn a link to a verified professional’s own website into an affiliate link: those links are free for the professional and earn us no commission.

How we’ll check this holds up

Before switching on any sponsored format, we’ll check by hand that the label is visible on mobile and desktop, that the result matches the filters of the search it appears in (a professional can’t be shown in a category or city where they don’t operate), and that a user can identify sponsored content without needing to click through. If we spot — or you report to us via corrections — a result that isn’t labelled properly, we’ll fix or pull it while it’s reviewed.

Questions?

For more on how advertising works (or will work) at CercaClaro, see our methodology, professional verification and editorial policy pages. For anything else about trust on the site, check our legal notice and privacy policy.