Most counterfeits waste your money. A counterfeit car seat gambles with the one passenger who cannot choose, in the one crash nobody schedules. Fake and non compliant child seats have been found on marketplace and discount channels repeatedly, dressed in the colours and logos of brands parents trust, built without the testing, materials, or energy management that make the real thing boring in a collision.
This is not a category for bargain instincts. It is a category for provenance, and the checks below are the ones safety organisations and manufacturers themselves publish, in plain form.
A genuine water filter for a stated standard can be found in the certifier's own listing, under the exact model number, naming the standard it was tested to. Counterfeits copy the box art and the certification logos while appearing in no listing at all. Checking the model in the certifier's database takes two minutes and settles what packaging never can.
Fake coupon pages are assembled automatically: a brand name, a list of plausible codes, most expired, invented, or scraped from unrelated promotions, and copy written to rank for brand plus coupon searches. The harm is real: customers check out feeling deceived by a discount that never existed, and support teams inherit the anger for a page the brand does not control.
The economics are affiliate economics. The aggregator sends the shopper through its link, drops its cookie, and earns commission on a purchase it contributed nothing to, while the fake code list is the bait that earned the click. Pages are generated per brand at scale, which is why the same template appears under thousands of names with the codes changed. Some listed codes are real but expired; some are users' one time codes scraped from forums; the rest are formatted guesses, SAVE20 patterns no brand issued.
Shoppers blame the brand, not the aggregator, because the brand is the name they trust in the transaction. That misdirected blame, plus affiliate cookie theft on traffic the brand earned itself, is the actual damage. Ranking harm compounds it: the aggregator's page can outrank the brand's own promotions page for the brand's own name.
Screenshot the page with dates, test and record which codes are invalid, and file through search engine spam and deceptive content reporting, trademark complaint routes where the page uses logos or implies affiliation, and the affiliate network the aggregator monetises through. That last channel is underrated: networks act on documented fake code abuse because it corrupts their attribution for every merchant, not just you.
Where the aggregator participates in your own affiliate programme, the remedy is immediate and contractual: terminate and claw back per programme terms. Audit your programme roster for code sites generally; brands regularly discover they are paying commission to the very pages listing invented codes in their name.
Publish and maintain one official promotions page: current offers, honest terms, a clear statement when no code is active, which is itself useful content shoppers respect. Keep it updated, because freshness is part of why aggregators win these searches, and link it from checkout and support answers so real customers find it first.
Support scripts matter too. When a customer complains a code failed, the agent should be able to say where the code came from was not the brand, and where real offers live. That sentence, delivered well, converts a deception the brand did not commit into a demonstration that the official channel is the reliable one.
Keep reading: Who we protect covers a nearby case in this series.
Much of the activity sits in deceptive practice and trademark territory rather than a single clear offence, which is why the working remedies are platform reports, affiliate network enforcement, and trademark complaints rather than one decisive law. Documented deception is what makes each channel act.
They are built solely for that search, updated constantly, and aggregated across thousands of brands, while the brand's own promotions page is often stale or missing. A maintained official offers page with current, honest content closes most of the gap.
Real promotions belong on your official page first, with terms stated. Scraping cannot be fully prevented, but an authoritative, current source reduces the aggregator's value to shoppers and gives search engines the better result to rank.
Audit your programme for coupon aggregators, enforce code policies in your terms, and use approved code attribution where the network supports it. Terminate documented abusers; networks respond to merchants who bring evidence.