How it works
How ranking works
We don't sell a spot at the top of the results, and the order isn't a mystery. The SAME formula decides the order everywhere on AD Appoint — browsing "Near you", searching by keyword, and every category or city page.
Every listing page, one formula
Wherever you're looking at a list of businesses, the order comes from a combination of:
- Matching your search (only when you typed something) — how well a business's name, services or description match your words.
- Distance (only when a place is known — your area, a city, or a ZIP), in bands rather than exact miles — a business 0.2 miles closer never jumps the queue; crossing 2, 5, 10, 25 or 50 miles does.
- Review quality, smoothed so a brand-new business with one 5★ review can't outrank one with 40 reviews averaging 4.8. A business with no reviews yet is scored right in the middle — neither boosted nor buried.
- Profile completeness — the same 0–100 checklist score a business sees on its own dashboard (photos, hours, services, a way to contact them, and so on). A fuller profile ranks a little higher; nothing here is hidden from the business itself.
- Availability — open right now ranks a little higher than closed-but-bookable, which ranks higher than a business that currently can't take bookings at all.
When one of those doesn't apply — there's no search box on "Near you", and a category page with no place typed has no distance to go by — it's simply left out and the rest decide the order, never a different formula.
On top of that, a small daily rotation — the same for every visitor, and it only changes once a day — can reorder businesses that are otherwise essentially tied. It's never large enough to move a clearly better-matching business down; it exists so a newer or less-established business still gets seen sometimes instead of the same few names always sitting on top.
Searching by keyword, or browsing a category with a place
When you type something to search for, and we also know a place (your area, a city or a ZIP), businesses are grouped into distance bands first — a great match on the other side of town still beats a so-so one 40 miles away — and matching your words decides the order within each band. With no place known at all, matching your words alone decides the order.
What never affects the order
No business can pay to rank higher in these results. Nothing about a business's plan, how long they've been on AD Appoint, or anything else not listed above changes where they show up.
Sponsored results Always labelled
Advertisers can request a labelled Sponsored spot on the discovery pages only — never on a business's own booking page. A sponsored result always carries the word "Sponsored" and is never mixed into, or presented as part of, the ranked list above.
Questions
If something about your ranking doesn't look right, contact us — we're glad to walk through exactly how your score was calculated.