When visitors search for a specific street address, they often expect a location at that exact address to appear first—even when other sorting rules would normally place a different location above it.
The Prioritize Exact Address Matches setting allows MetaLocator to promote a location that matches the searched address coordinates to the top of the results.
This option also works when results are reordered using drive time.
When to Use This Setting
Enable this setting when your locator contains locations that visitors may search for directly, such as:
A specific store, office, facility, or dealer address
A building that also contains other nearby locations
A location that might otherwise rank lower because of category priority, weighted sorting, distance, drive time, or another configured sorting rule
For example, suppose a visitor searches for:
200 Turf Drive, Placentia, CA 92870
Without exact-address prioritization, another nearby location might appear first because it has a higher priority score or a shorter calculated drive time.
With the setting enabled, the location at the searched address is promoted to the first position, provided that it meets the address-quality requirements described below.
Enabling Exact Address Prioritization
Click Interfaces
Open the appropriate interface in the Interface Builder.
Click Filter & Sort
Locate the Prioritize Exact Address Matches setting in the results sorting options (You may need to click ...More Filter & Sort Features)
Select Yes.
Save the interface.
Test the interface by searching for the complete address of one of your locations.
Once enabled, MetaLocator evaluates whether any returned location represents a sufficiently accurate match for the searched address.
How an Exact Address Match Is Determined
A result is eligible for promotion when:
Its latitude and longitude very closely matches the coordinates returned for the visitor’s address search.
Its geocoding accuracy is considered suitable for an exact address match
The location includes sufficient address information
The coordinate comparison allows for a very small tolerance of approximately 11 meters. This accommodates minor coordinate differences while still requiring the result to be located at essentially the same place as the searched address.
Location Requirements
To prevent incomplete or broadly geocoded records from being promoted incorrectly, an eligible location must include values in at least each of the following fields:
Address
City
Postal Code
Country, represented by the TLD field
The location must also have one of the following geocoding accuracy values:
ROOFTOP
Manual
No specified location type
Locations that do not meet these requirements remain in their normal position according to the interface’s configured sorting rules.
Support for Drive-Time Sorting
Exact-address prioritization is applied after the final weighted and drive-time sorting comparisons.
When drive-time sorting is enabled:
Results are first ordered by drive time
MetaLocator identifies any qualifying exact-address match.
The qualifying match is promoted to the top.
Distance remains available as a tie-breaking factor
This means you can continue using drive-time calculations without allowing a location at the visitor’s searched address to be displaced by another result with a slightly shorter calculated route or a higher sorting score.
Interaction With Other Sorting Rules
This setting does not replace your existing result-order configuration. It a final prioritization for qualifying exact-address matches.
Example
Consider an interface containing these results:
A preferred dealer located 0.4 miles from the searched address
A standard dealer located at the exact searched address
Another dealer located 0.7 miles away
Your sorting configuration might normally place the preferred dealer first.
With Prioritize Exact Address Matches enabled, the standard dealer at the searched address is moved to the first position. The preferred dealer and all remaining locations continue to follow the regular sorting configuration.
Testing the Setting
After enabling the option, test with a location whose full street address is stored in MetaLocator:
Confirm that the location has complete address, city, postal-code, and country information.
Confirm that its map position is accurate.
Search for its complete street address.
Verify that the matching location appears first.
Repeat the test with drive-time sorting enabled, when applicable.
Search for a nearby address that does not exactly match a location and confirm that normal sorting remains in effect.
For the most reliable results, keep location coordinates and address fields accurate and complete.
Troubleshooting
The matching location is not appearing first
Confirm that:
Prioritize Exact Address Matches is set to Yes.
The complete street address was entered in the search.
The location’s coordinates closely match the geocoded search coordinates.
Address, city, postal-code, and country fields are populated.
The location has a supported geocoding accuracy value.
The location is included in the result set and has not been excluded by a category, territory, field filter, radius, or other search condition.
A nearby location is being promoted unexpectedly
Review the stored coordinates for both locations. Locations within the small coordinate tolerance may be treated as occupying the same address, particularly when multiple records share a building or manually assigned map position.
Adjust the location coordinates or disable the setting when multiple records intentionally share nearly identical coordinates and should instead follow the normal sorting configuration.
Summary
The Prioritize Exact Address Matches setting helps visitors find the location they searched for directly while preserving the remainder of your sorting configuration.
It is particularly useful for interfaces that combine direct address searches with advanced ranking, weighted sorting, or drive-time calculations.