Trainers - How the Locator Chooses


Now that we've discussed how many ZIP Codes each personal trainer may have, this section covers how the Locator works and how the list of personal trainers are selected. Bare in mind that this is a very important part of lead generation for the system but it is not a requirement for trainers to participate.

The rules can be summarized accordingly:

  • Database grabs a pool of up to 100 trainer records to select from.

    • *Up to 10 Free Memberships with exact ZIP Code matches.
    • *Up to 15 Free Memberships if meet the mileage criteria.
    • *Up to 15 Featured Trainers with exact ZIP Code match.
    • *Up to 60 Featured Trainers if meet the mileage criteria.
  • 10 random records will be chosen from the possible 100 selected to the pool.
  • A trainer can be in the pool more than once but can be in the final 10 records only once.

The details

When visitors come to the site, they enter a ZIP code to search. They can also specify the number of miles they are willing to travel to a trainer and that is factored into the search results. The default mileage setting is 50 miles so if they do not specify any mileage, the Locater will take into account all ZIP Codes within a 50 mile radius of the ZIP Code entered for the criteria. (There can be a lot of ZIP Codes within a 50 mile radius.)

The Locator's database will then attempt to find up to 100 ZIP code listings which are the 'closest' based on their geographic centers of the ZIP Codes and the distribution pattern below.

10 free memberships - exact ZIP matches

The Locator will grab up to 10 Free Membership trainers for the pool if they are exact ZIP Code matches. Since we only allow a maximum of 10 Free Memberships to use the same ZIP code, there will never be more than 10. And since a trainer's first ZIP code is always their physical location, the system allows for up to 10 trainers, for free, in a relatively small geographic location.

15 free memberships - mileage matches

The Locator will get up to 15 additional Free Membership trainers for the pool that are not exact ZIP Code matches but fit the visitor's mileage requirements. Before the 15 are selected, ALL Free Membershop trainers that are not exact matches and fit the mileage criteria are found and then 15 random records are selected from those.

15 featured memberships - exact ZIP matches

Next, the Locator will get up to 15 Featured Trainers for the pool that are also exact ZIP Code matches. Featured trainers can attach additional ZIP Codes to their trainers that they wish to target. They must meet the visitors mileage criteria to be included in the results but they are basically a paid inclusion. Since we only allow up to 15 Featured Trainers per ZIP Code, we will never have more than 15 exact match Featured Trainers in the results.

60 featured memberships - mileage matches

Finally, the Locator will select up to 60 Featured Trainers for the pool that fit the mileage criteria and that are not exact ZIP Code matches. Just like the Free Membership non-match trainers, first all Featured Trainers that fit the mileage criteria are selected. Then 60 random records are selected from those.

Now rarely if ever will the trainers pool have a full 100 trainers but with larger mileage criteria in densely populated areas, it may. If a visitor searches a ZIP code and chooses a mileage radius of 10 miles, that list would probably be significantly smaller.

pick 10 from those

From that maximum 100 trainers in the pool that fit the ZIP criteria, a random 10 records will be displayed each time that ZIP Code is searched. Those 10 records will be listed in a random order as links to the individual trainer profiles.

Since a Featured Trainer can list in more than 1 ZIP Code, they will have a chance to appear each time the physical location ZIP Code AND the "spotlight" ZIP Code meet the mileage criteria. However, regardless of the number of times a trainer is chosen for the pool of 100, they will never display on the Locator more than once per search.

pick zips around you

So it should follow that 1 trainer could be in 1 ZIP Code of a densely populated area and get many chances to be selected for the pool of 100. There are over 2500 cities in the U.S. that have more than 5 ZIP Codes and the chances are extremely high that if you selected those ZIP Codes in those cities, you would always hit the mileage criteria.

What this is designed to do is to easily give a way for a trainer to get maximum exposure in high-concentrated areas as well as providing a fair, equitable, and random way of choosing trainers. Obviously the system is somewhat weighted towards the Featured (or "paid") Trainers but it does give a fair opportunity for the Free Memberships to be found as well.

 
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