GuildQuality

GuildQuality’s member directory — the Qlist — includes lots of information about most of our builders, remodelers, real estate developers, and contractors. And as such, it enjoys a tremendous amount of consumer traffic.

We’ve invested a lot of energy in designing and improving the Qlist, always with a focus on making it as helpful as possible for consumers who are looking to learn more about the members of our community of quality.

A couple months ago, we tweaked the default sort order, so that it no longer sorted companies solely by the content of their profile, but also by the consistency of their survey feedback. The more consistently someone has been surveying over the past year, the more likely they are to appear near the top of the list.

Last night we introduced a third component: “interestingness” (I believe the concept was first widely used by Flickr for photo sharing). Now, in addition to the amount of content and the consistency of surveying, members in the Qlist are also ranked by how interesting visitors have found their profile page to be.

To measure “interestingness”, we divide the number of visitors to the profile by the number of total “clicks” during the visit. The more likely someone is to click (on the members’ company website link, their Listings, their Customer Report, their Twitter page, etc), the more “interesting” we deem that listing, and the more Qlist juice we give it.

Each of the three categories (Amount of Content, Consistency of Surveying, and Interestingness) constitute roughly a third of the strength we give each profile in the default rankings. For each member, the first two won’t change very much, and the last one (Interestingness) will change daily: Clicks made on Tuesday impact Wednesday’s sort order.

With this addition, consumer behavior will begin impacting profile sort rankings. The more engaging people find your content, the higher you’ll rank. Our idea is that this will reward members who include lots of compelling content, and it will make our Qlist an even stronger resource for consumers looking to learn more about some great companies.