Why isn't clickbank merchant database searchable?

[NewslettersPlus.biz]

Okay -- admittedly a newbie. Lots to learn, working hard to catch up to a halfway decent level of knowledge -- so please bear with me.

I don't understand why the Clickbank marketplace doesn't include being able to search for merchants by their sites, 'nickname/merchant name' (or their hoplink code 'name') in order to determine if they are still in good standing, other status, contact info, etc.

Through various online searching, researching various affiliate 'directories' etc, (as recommended in your guidebook, Ros), I have come across some affiliate programs that seemingly are, or at least were at some point, affiliated with clickbank.

However, some use the old hoplink formats (that I have been told by clickbank staff no longer are valid), some of their pages with 'use this' affiliate links don't work (go to 404s if I insert my affiliate name, for instance instead of all the EDIT:WORD NOT ALLOWED's) and often they no longer show 'affiliates' info links on the bottom of their pages or how to contact them.

Also, for a few I have tried going through the early checkout page process only to reveal a non-clickbank page with no affiliate="EDIT:WORD NOT ALLOWED" at the very bottom, as a standard 'legal and active' clickbank merchant checkout page does.

So my core question is this:
(cuz I didn't read it anywhere in clickbank, although admittedly it might be there somewhere in all those pages): what happens when a clickbank merchant is dropped, quits, discontinues, goes bust, etc? How does an affiliate actively promoting their products get notified?

I can see this scenario based on what I know thus far: Obviously if one has to check every affiliate link and product one is promoting to make sure they are still active and valid, that is a very time consuming (inefficient) proposition. If one does not do that however, and a merchant goes bust, one is losing money and customers by referring customers to a dead program /or no-longer valid merchant.

Unlike CJ, I haven't discovered any information that Clickbank sends notices to an affiliate that a merchant is no longer valid, nor have I found a way that an affiliate can search for the status of the merchant. Wouldn't it be great to have a 'flag' this merchant/product, send me an email when the merchant/product/relationship changes? Do they have that and I just don't know it yet?

How time consuming and inefficient is it for individual affiliates to send emails and wait for for responses from clickbank to find out? (rhetorical question since that's the only way I've discovered how to check a merchant's status)

So, I'm sorry if I've missed the obvious answer to this question somewhere else -- but before I go too far down the clickbank road, I would love some enlightenment/advice/knowledge/suggestions (that I've not received yet from or discovered at clickbank).

Like I said, still a newbie and newbies do often ask dumb questions -- and hopefully learn well from them!

Cheers!

[richerbrat]

Well you can search products - but you can type in the authors name, and it still doesn't come up on the first page - so not a great search facility. Rosalind did review some gizmo for searching clickbank in her blog. I don't remember a lot about it, but you may be able to find it in her resources section to the right.