How matching works

1. We read what you actually said

Every search starts as a sentence. We parse it into a structured brief — the service, the result you want, where you are, what you can spend, who it’s for, when you need it and what kind of room you want to sit in.

So “a barber around Brighton who’s good with longer men’s hair, under $70, somewhere relaxed’’ becomes six separate things to match on, not one keyword. We show you that interpretation on the results page so you can see immediately if we read you wrong.

We also read what you don’t want. “Not a sports massage” and “not one of those rushed barbers” are treated as real constraints.

2. We match against structured data, not descriptions

A business profile isn’t a paragraph of marketing copy. Services are individual records with prices, durations and the results they produce. Specialties carry a strength, so we know the difference between a salon that can do curly hair and one that does nothing else. Atmosphere, who a place suits, group sizes, access and typical waiting times are all separate, structured fields.

That is what makes a budget a real constraint rather than a guess, and what stops a $22 kids’ cut being offered as evidence that a shop fits your $70 haircut budget.

3. Each dimension is scored separately

We score up to eleven dimensions independently — service, desired result, location, budget, atmosphere, who it suits, availability, group size, walk-ins, track record, and anything else you mentioned. Each returns a score between zero and one along with the reasons behind it.

Only the dimensions you actually expressed are counted. If you said nothing about budget, budget doesn’t quietly influence your results.

4. Some dimensions can veto the rest

A plain average lets several mediocre scores drown one critical failure. That is how directories end up recommending a kids’ barber to someone growing their hair out.

So the two decisive dimensions — can they do the service, and are they good at the result you want — are applied multiplicatively. A business that is close, affordable, well-rated and completely wrong for your hair does not come out at eighty per cent.

5. Reputation is a tiebreaker, not the ranking

Ratings are useful for separating two otherwise equal options. They are close to useless for deciding whether somewhere suits you specifically. A 4.9 average tells you a lot of people were happy; it tells you nothing about whether anyone there has cut hair like yours.

So reputation carries one of the lowest weights in the model, and it only rises if you explicitly ask for experience or specialists.

6. We stop when the good matches run out

Below a relevance threshold we stop listing results and tell you how many we held back and why. Padding a page with businesses that cannot help you is how a directory wastes your afternoon.

If nothing in our coverage fits, we say so rather than showing you the nearest thing and hoping.

7. Every result has to explain itself

Each match lists the specific reasons it was chosen — the specialty, the price, the distance, the atmosphere — and the caveats alongside them. If somewhere is a great fit but books three weeks out, or sits above your budget, that appears on the card.

A recommendation you can’t interrogate isn’t worth much. How we source and verify data is the other half of that.

Common questions

Is the match score an opinion or a calculation?

It is a calculation. Each thing you tell us becomes a dimension that is scored from zero to one against the business's structured data, then combined using fixed weights. Nothing is hand-placed and no business can pay to move.

Why do some results show a percentage and others don't?

A percentage is only shown when you have given us enough to justify one. If you search for a single word, we show a broad tier such as "Good match" instead, because a precise-looking number would imply a precision we do not have.

Do businesses pay to rank higher?

No. There is no paid placement, no promoted results and no advertising in the ranking. Claiming a profile is free and does not affect position — it only improves the accuracy of the data we match against.

Why is a lower-rated business sometimes ranked above a higher-rated one?

Because suitability matters more than popularity. A salon rated 4.6 that specialises in curly hair is a better answer for someone with curls than a 4.9-rated generalist. Reputation is one of the lightest-weighted signals we use.