How we rank

When you browse

When you browse a category, a region or a delivery format, the listings are shown in an order that is reshuffled once per day. Every listing takes its turn near the top. Nobody holds the top of a category permanently and no trainer can buy their way there.

The shuffle runs automatically each night, so the page you see tomorrow is ordered differently from the one you see today. A trainer near the bottom on Monday may be near the top on Tuesday. We'e done this intentionally. It gives a specialist with a small budget the same chance of booking work as a larger business with a bigger budget.

When you search

When you search, Skillyard looks at what you typed and matches it against the fields each trainer filled in: their subject and specialism, the formats they deliver and the area they are based in or cover. A listing appears because it matches your words, your location and your chosen format, and for no other reason. The matches are then shown in the same daily shuffle as the browse pages, so no trainer sits fixed at the top of a search, and no one can pay to move up the list.

If you search for a subject in a place, the results are split into two groups. First the trainers based in that place, then the trainers who cover it from elsewhere. If you want someone local, they are gathered at the top and easy to find. If you want anyone who will deliver in your area, they are all there in the group below. You are never left guessing which is which and a trainer who covers your area from elsewhere is not dressed up as a local one.

What decides the order

Here is a comprehensive list of things that affect where a listing appears.

• The order on every page, when you browse and when you search, comes from a ranking number value hidden in our database. It is reshuffled at random once a day and it is the same deal for every listing.
• On search, whether the listing's own subject, location and format fields match what you searched for, decides whether it appears at all.
• The filters you choose narrow what you see but never change the order.

And here are the things that have no effect on the order:

• What a trainer pays. Every trainer pays the same subscription. Founder members who pay nothing rank exactly the same as everyone else.
• Sponsorship or bidding. There is no auction for position, because there are no paid positions to bid on.
• How long a trainer has been listed, or how much they have spent on anything, anywhere.

Placement on Skillyard cannot be bought. There are no sponsored listings and no paid positions of any kind. If you see a trainer at the top of a page, it is because they fit your search and the daily shuffle put them there today, not because they paid for it.

How this fits with verification

This page is about the order that listings appear in. How a listing earns its place on Skillyard at all and the checks every business passes before it goes live, is set out on our how we verify page. The two work as a pair. Verification decides who is on the site. This page decides how they are shown once they are here.

Common questions