Matching
Searching answers a question you asked. Matching answers the one you did not: what is in the catalogue that you would want, phrased in a way you would never have typed.
It works from what you have done rather than what you have said. There is no form to fill in.
What it learns from
Four things you do count as you stating a preference, and one does not.
| What you do | What it means | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Save a property | You want this one | 3 |
| View a property | You were curious | 1 |
| Dismiss a property | Stop showing me this | recorded |
| Enquire | The strongest signal there is | recorded |
A save counts three times what a view does, because opening a listing is ambiguous and saving one is not. The last hundred of these are what the profile is built from, so it follows you rather than remembering a search you did in February.
What it builds
From those hundred:
- Where. The five cities that appear most, weighted.
- What. The three property types that appear most, weighted.
- How much. A band from 70% to 130% of the weighted average price of what you looked at.
Those, together with a description of each property involved, become a written summary of you. That summary is what gets matched against the catalogue, which is why matching finds things your filters would have excluded: it is comparing meaning, not ticking boxes.
You can read the profile at any time. It costs nothing and it is worth looking at, because it is the whole of what matching thinks about you and it is short.
What comes back
Ten properties by default, up to fifty, each with a score and a sentence saying why it was picked. The sentence is written for that property against your profile rather than chosen from a list, so it is worth reading: it usually names the thing the two have in common, which is sometimes not what you expected.
Steering it
Save deliberately. A save is worth three views, and it is the fastest way to move the profile. Saving something you are curious about but would not buy moves it in a direction you do not want.
Dismiss what is wrong. Dismissing is not just hiding. It is the only way to say no rather than saying nothing, and a profile built only from what you liked has no idea what you rejected.
Give it something to work from. With no history there is no profile, and matching returns nothing. That is the honest answer rather than a page of popular listings: half a dozen saves is enough to start.
The profile is rebuilt when you save, unsave, dismiss or enquire. Views feed it but do not trigger a rebuild on their own, so a browsing session is reflected the next time you act on something.
What it is not
It does not watch for new properties. That is what alerts do, and the two are separate on purpose: matching is a question you ask of the whole catalogue, and an alert is a standing instruction about what arrives in it.
It also does not rank by price, distance or recency. A cheaper property that is nothing like what you have saved will not appear above one that is.