What is Nestoria Rank?

To the people who use Nestoria to find their dream property Nestoria Rank is the behind the scenes magic that decides which properties are the best results for their search query

To our partners it's the same thing.  But we try to be a bit more revealing about how it works so that they understand that presenting users with the right property first time benefits them as well as the house hunters, even if it means that their listings don't appear at the top of every query.  To our partners we refer to Nestoria Rank as an algorithm rather than magic.  An algorithm using a few key scales, or metrics, that help decide the results returned for each query: relevancy, freshness, usability or quality and comprehensiveness.

Lots of people like to talk about comprehensiveness because the numbers are big, and lots of choice is good right?  True, but as far as we're concerned giving people hundreds of properties to choose from isn't necessarily Nestoria at it most useful.  That irritating thing about less being more holds true if less equals more perfectly matched results. Which is what vertical search is about.

Relevancy relies in part on the level of search detail house hunters can provide us with.  Which is helped along by us adding new ways for property hunters to refine their search.  Things like allowing people to refine their search by insisting on a balcony or garage.

As well as by the number of bedrooms, and/ or bathrooms, and by location and price. 

Which means searches like this one for a rental property in Mt. Lawley, Perth, with three or more bedrooms, two or more bathrooms, a balcony and a garage, priced from $700 are possible.  We have four properties currently matching this description.

Freshness isn't about the age of a property – though that's another thing you can filter your search for, but we call it 'new builds' – it's about the age of the listing.  How long a property has been on the market is relevant information for house hunters, so we allow them to refine their search by the freshness of the listing. 

Usability and quality refer to the information that Nestoria is given by the real estate agents via our portal partners.  A lot of testing has gone on since Nestoria UK was launched in 2006, and from those tests we've learned that house hunters appreciate information – be that in the form of photos of the property, specific prices and descriptions that provide them with any details we don't have a search refining tool for.  We've done our best to help out with that as well, by providing as much information about the local area as possible in the form of adding map pins marking schools, transport and other local services.  But it helps if our partners understand why we're asking them for so much detail.

The bottom line is that if we're able to give house hunters the best lot of results first time round they'll be happy.  And as far as our partners go Nestoria Rank dramatically improves the ratio between the number of serious enquiries they get and the number of people who take a peek and move on.  And we get a happy buzz about the awesomeness of our search technology.  So everyone's a winner. 

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