Market rules and method statement

Each market's review rules and their versions; the "How we collect reviews" page on your site.

The Rules and compliance › Market rules screen shows each market’s review rules and the status of your method statement. The screen shows only the markets where you have a channel; if you have no channel yet, all of Sayproof’s markets are shown. When a channel is selected in the panel’s top bar, the screen shows only that channel’s market, the rules of that market and that channel, and that channel’s method statements.

Market rules

Each market’s rules cover four points. In the table below, Regulation refers to the Regulation on Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices.

Rule	Legal basis (Türkiye)
Proof of purchase required	Regulation, Art. 28/B-1: reviews from channels where the purchase cannot be verified may not be published
Time to write a review	The legislation sets no specific period; the Sayproof rule allows 90 days, and your brand can set 7–365 days in its own version
Sort options offered	Regulation, Art. 28/B-4: reviews are published according to objective criteria such as date, rating or seller
Default sort order	Regulation, Art. 28/B-4 requires an objective criterion; the Sayproof rule defaults to date, and your brand can choose one of the sort options offered in its own version

The defined markets:

Rule	Türkiye	European Union
Proof of purchase required	Yes: only reviews with proof are published	No: reviews without proof can also be published; reviews with proof are marked
Time to write a review	90 days from delivery	90 days from delivery
Sort options offered	Date · Rating · With seller response	Date · Rating · With seller response · Most helpful
Default sort order	Date	Date

The screen has four tabs. The single sentence above each tab explains what the tab is for:

Markets: each market’s rules version in force, the date it took effect and the Sayproof rule or Your own rule label; whether proof of purchase is required, the time to write a review and the sort options offered. If you opened a separate rule for a channel, it is shown under the market. A version that starts on a later date is shown with the Scheduled badge, its version number and its start date.
Compare: the markets’ rules side by side. The Basis (Turkey) column shows each rule’s basis in Turkish legislation.
Method statement: the status and text of the “How we collect reviews” page on each of your channels’ sites; the details are in the Method statement section below.
Version history: each market’s rules versions and, in the Source column, whose they are; the version in force is marked In force and a version starting on a later date Scheduled. Old versions are never deleted.

Updating the rules

Market rules start from the rules Sayproof prepares in line with the regulation; on the screen these carry the Sayproof rule label. A user with the Can manage market rules permission (Administrator) can open a new version for your brand with the Change the rules button on the Markets tab. That version carries the Your own rule label and affects only your brand.

The wizard has five steps: Scope (all your channels in a market or a single channel) → Rules (proof of purchase requirement and time to write a review) → Sorting (sort options offered to customers and the default sort) → Start (right away or from a specific day) → Summary. The Fill in with the Sayproof rule button fills the fields with that market’s Sayproof rule.

Your own version stays within these limits:

If the Sayproof rule requires proof of purchase (Türkiye, Regulation Art. 28/B-1), the requirement cannot be turned off; the option is disabled in the wizard and the request gets 400 invalid / verification_locked. In a market where proof is not required (European Union) you can make it required.
The time to write a review must be between 7 and 365 days.
The sort options offered are chosen from the sort options in that market’s Sayproof rule (sort_not_offered); the default sort must be one of the options offered.
The start date cannot be in the past.

A version opened for a single channel applies only to that channel; the market’s rule stays in force on the other channels, and the Markets tab shows a “Separate rule on the channel” line under the market. The version in force on a channel is the one with the latest start date among the versions whose start date has arrived (Sayproof’s and yours). When the law changes, Sayproof publishes the new version with a software update; on the day it starts it replaces the version you opened earlier, and you can open your own version again if you wish. A version starting on a later day is shown with the Scheduled badge until then, and the current rules stay in force until that day.

Every new version is recorded in the Activity history with its previous and new values. When the rules change, the method statement text of those channels is updated too; if you publish the statement on your own page, you need to update your page and confirm again.

Effect of versions on earlier reviews

Each review is assessed under the rules version in force on the date it was written, and is stored together with that version. A new version only applies to reviews written after its start date. As a result, in an audit it can always be shown under which rules a review was published.

The time to write a review, however, follows the version in force on the day the product was delivered. If a new version shortens the time, it does not shorten it for orders already delivered; if it extends the time, it does not extend it for them either.

Method statement

The method statement is the page that explains how the reviews on your site are collected. Article 6/3 of the Turkish Advertising Board’s Guideline on Consumer Reviews requires this information to be made available to consumers clearly and understandably; Sayproof produces and publishes the statement on your behalf. The review section always contains the “How we collect reviews” link, and it cannot be removed.

The statement is produced as a separate text for each channel and language; the text is built from the market rules and the publishing method that apply to that channel. The text shown in the panel, the fingerprint used when confirming and the public page on that channel’s site are the same text. The statement has four sections:

Section	Content
How purchases are verified	How reviews are associated with purchases; whether reviews without proof are published; that a customer whose order was cancelled or who returned the item can review their experience up to that point in the same way, and that such reviews are marked separately
Are all reviews published	That positive and negative reviews go through the same process; your publishing method; the rejection reasons; that a low rating is not a reason for rejection; that the author of a rejected review is sent the reason and a correction link
How the average is calculated	That the average is the arithmetic mean of published reviews for each market; that channels in the same market are counted together and different markets separately
How reviews are sorted	The sort options offered, the default sort order in force on the channel and that there is no paid placement

If you take reviews from a marketplace, one more section, Reviews imported from other sites, is added to the statement: it says that imported reviews are published with their source and a link, that they count in the average and in the number of reviews, that they carry no Verified buyer badge, and, in one sentence for every active marketplace, on what terms its reviews are taken. The text changes when a marketplace is added or no longer there; if you host the statement on your own page you have to confirm it again. For details: Marketplace reviews.

The statement text is not written by hand; when the market rules that apply to the channel, the publishing method that applies to the channel (coming from the general, market or channel setting) or the statement text provided by Sayproof change, the text is updated automatically. Two channels in the same market have different statements if their rules or publishing methods differ.

The table on the Method statement tab has a row for each active channel and each language: Channel, Market, Language, Opens (the Sayproof page or your own page’s address), Status and Last confirmed. The Manage button on the row (Details for users without the permission to change settings) or the channel’s name opens a side panel: the status and the page that opens, the Publish on your own page section (the address and the link buttons) and the Statement text section (Copy the text and the full text). The link to your own page and its confirmation are kept separately for each channel and language.

The Sayproof page

By default, the link opens the page published by Sayproof. The page is opened with the channel’s site key and shows that channel’s statement; if the channel has no site key in use, the Opens line in the side panel says “no working site key on this channel”. This page always shows the current text and requires no action from you. In this case the table’s Opens column says Sayproof page and its Status column says “No confirmation needed”.

Your own page

To publish the method statement on your own site (this requires the “Can change settings” permission):

Enter the page address in the Your page address field and press Save the link. The address must start with https and be on one of your verified domains.
Use Copy the text to take the statement text and publish it on your page.
Press I updated my page. This confirmation is recorded in the Activity history as your declaration that your page shows exactly the same text as the panel.

Statuses:

Status	Meaning
Sayproof page	Your own page is not linked; the Sayproof page opens and no confirmation is needed (the table’s Status column says “No confirmation needed”)
Up to date	Your own page is linked and your last confirmation matches the current text
Needs update	Your page has never been confirmed, or the text has changed since your last confirmation

Every change to the statement’s content (the rules, the publishing method or the text) makes a confirmed statement outdated, and the status becomes Needs update; the statement must be confirmed again. This is also shown on the Overview screen and on the Statistics › Compliance tab. During this period, the link continues to open your page; update your page with the new text and confirm again. To switch back to the Sayproof page, use the Go back to the Sayproof page button.

No change is needed in your store’s code; the link address is taken from the core.method_statement.url field of the review list response.