Features

Cross-store product linking

This is the part that makes Pukulink different. Across Amazon, Rakuten Ichiba and Yahoo! Shopping, only the items you have confirmed to be the same product are linked into one card, and the card shows each store's price. You do not have to link all three.

Bound by product code, not by guesswork

Matching on product names alone confuses model variants, capacities, bundles and resold listings. If a reader clicks your Amazon button and lands on a different item, they stop trusting the article — not just the link.

So Pukulink drops the guessing and gives you an explicit link action instead. From the insert preview you search another store, and when you are sure it is the same product you press Link. The product code — ASIN, Rakuten itemCode or JAN code — is what gets saved on the card.

Because the binding is a product code:

• Readers always land on that exact product page. No search-results detour, no wandering off to something else.
• Each store's price updates independently. “¥42,800 on Amazon, ¥43,500 on Rakuten” side by side, so the reader can choose.
• You can change it later. Links can be edited or removed from a card that is already published.

How to link

1. Pick a product; the insert preview opens. Press ＋ Link an item from another store.
2. Choose a store other than the one you started in and search by product name (for Rakuten and Yahoo! you can narrow to a favourite store).
3. Press Link on the result you have confirmed is the same product.
4. Back in the preview, check the per-store items and prices, then insert.

What linking stores

What happens to stores you didn't link

Not nothing. Their buttons become links to that store's search results for the keyword you searched with. Instead of asserting which item is the right one, Pukulink hands the reader the marketplace's own results and lets them pick.

• Rakuten Ichiba: search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/keyword/
• Yahoo! Shopping: shopping.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=keyword
• Amazon: the keyword search results page

Your affiliate ID is applied to search links too, so a purchase made from there still earns. Mixing direct links and search links on one card is completely fine — publish with one store linked, then link the others later to tighten it up.

Using the search link as a filtered search

Search links use a short search keyword, not the card's long product title, and you can edit that keyword freely in the Search keyword field of the insert preview. The title displayed on the card does not change.

So even if you found the item by searching “wireless headphones”, setting the field to WH-1000XM6 means unlinked stores land on results filtered by model number. For products where resold or compatible items crowd the top of the results, adding the model, capacity or colour saves your reader a lot of squinting.

Linking costs you effort per product; adjusting the search keyword costs one edit and covers every remaining store. Link the hero product, and let a well-chosen keyword handle the rest is a perfectly reasonable way to work. Leave the field empty and it falls back to searching by product name.

Product image gallery

When a product has several photos, the card image can be swiped through — good for showing angles or included accessories. It is off by default and is meant to be switched on only where you want it.

Requirements

Convenient, but with a list of conditions worth reading first.

Two levels of opt-in

So post content doesn't bloat, you choose which products get a gallery.

1. Turn on Product image gallery under Display & Design (the site-wide default; off initially).
2. Tick Include extra photos in the insert preview — it only appears for products that actually have extra images. Only ticked products get their extra image URLs saved into the post.

As with prices, each card can override the site setting with Follow site setting / Always show / Always hide. Try the gallery on one product while the site setting stays off, or exclude a single product while it is on.

What it doesn't do

• No lightbox. Tapping an image follows the link to the product page.
• No thumbnail strip and no autoplay slideshow.
• Images cannot have individual link targets — they all go to the same product page.
• Depending on what the Amazon API returns, extra images sometimes cannot be fetched. The card then shows the single main image as before.
• The arrows are drawn by JavaScript. Without JavaScript there are no arrows, but swiping and keyboard navigation still work.

Classic and Block editors

Pukulink supports both editors, with the Classic Editor as a stated strength. Neither is dropped. Both save the same [pukulink ...] shortcode, so switching editors later leaves your posts intact.

Classic Editor

• An Add Pukulink button with the Pukuo icon appears in the media button row above the editor.
• In the Visual tab, the shortcode renders as a product card placeholder rather than raw text (you can switch it back to plain shortcodes in the settings). The placeholder also shows which template will be used.
• It works in both Visual and Text modes, on desktop and on a phone.

Block Editor

• Add the Pukulink block from the inserter, or type /pukulink (searching for “product link” finds it too).
• The same search modal also opens from the Pukuo icon in the toolbar of any selected block.
• Inserted cards become a Pukulink Card block and render as the real card in the editor. Edit card in the toolbar reopens the picker.

AI markers (Classic Editor, Visual tab)

Leave [pukulink_draft keyword="product name"] in an AI-written draft and the Classic Editor's Visual tab highlights it. Press the pencil button, pick from the search results, and the marker becomes a product card. Markers left in a published post are invisible to readers. Example prompts to give your AI are on the plugin's Help tab.

When a post has several markers, confirming one moves you straight to the next. Progress is shown as “AI markers: 2 of 5”, and Skip this marker passes over anything you don't want to handle now (skipped markers stay in the body for later). You choose and confirm each product yourself; nothing is inserted in bulk.

Click tracking and reports

Button clicks are recorded per marketplace. The Report tab shows this month and last month as post × store × clicks (top 50 rows per month). For long-term trends, enable event sending to Google Analytics (gtag) and follow it there.

What gets recorded is only “which post, which store's button, and when”. Nothing that identifies a person is stored. See the privacy page for details.

Product health

A product whose price can no longer be fetched may have been discontinued. The report screen lists them and lets you search, in one click, for the posts that use them — so old links can be found and fixed.

What it can and can't do

Three marketplaces are supported, but each API exposes different information, so the features differ too. Here it is up front, rather than as a surprise later.

By marketplace

Amazon has no star rating because the Creators API does not return review scores. Instead you get a “Read reviews” link to Amazon's review page. Rakuten and Yahoo! are the reverse: star ratings, but no review-page link.

Ratings and review links come from the main item — the store you searched first. So a card whose main item is on Amazon shows only the review link, and a card based on Rakuten or Yahoo! shows only the star rating. (Linking Amazon as a secondary store does not add the review link.) If you want stars, start the search in Rakuten or Yahoo!.

Yahoo! Shopping is the most constrained of the three: items without a JAN code keep showing the price captured at insertion (common for handmade goods and bundles), and galleries are unavailable.

By template

Differences between the editors

Searching, inserting and editing products work the same in both editors. Only two things differ.

• AI markers are Classic Editor (Visual tab) only. The Block Editor has no marker highlighting or pencil-button confirmation for [pukulink_draft] (nor does the Text tab).
• The “card display in the editor” toggle is Classic Editor only. The Block Editor always renders the card.

Deliberately left out

Some things are absent on purpose. Here they are, with the reasoning.

Operational things worth knowing

• Click tracking is approximate. Repeat clicks from the same connection, post and store count once per minute; only published posts are tracked; JavaScript is required. Read it as a trend.
• Reports cover this month and last month, top 50 rows each. Use Google Analytics for longer horizons.
• Price history is recorded but has no screen yet. It is data collection for a future price-trend chart.
• The product health report shows up to 20 items per section.
• Insertion history keeps the latest 50 items. Older products need a fresh search.
• One linked item per marketplace, per card.