Auto-locate visitors

On a local marketplace, the best listing is often the closest one. Auto-locate asks visitors’ browsers for their position, suggests the nearest of your locations, and lets them see listings by distance from where they are.

What visitors see

On the home page, the browser asks for permission to use their location. If they allow it, a window titled Please choose your closest location lists your locations within the distance you set, nearest first, with the distance to each. Picking one shows the home page for that location. A Change Location link in the footer clears the choice.
On listing pages, a button such as 50 km from you lets them limit results to listings near them and see how far away each one is, and the Sort menu gets a Distance option to show the nearest first.

Nothing is shared unless the visitor allows it in their browser, and their position stays in their browser: Yclas uses it to sort and filter, it doesn’t save it to their account.

What you need

A secure (https) site. Browsers only share a location with secure sites. Sites hosted by Yclas have a certificate; if you use your own domain, check that it opens with https. See Connect your own domain.
Google Maps connected. Auto-locate uses Google Maps to place visitors. See Maps.
Coordinates on your locations. Only locations with a latitude and longitude can be suggested. Set them on each location in Listings › Locations. See Locations.
Positions on your listings. Distances can only be worked out for listings posted with the map in the posting form. See How listings get onto the map.

Turn it on

Go to Addons and open Auto locate.
Click Enable.
Go to Integrations › Google Maps and set Nearby distance: how far away a location can be and still be suggested. Click Save.

You can also switch it on with the Locate visitors box on the Google Maps page; both control the same setting.

Setting	What it does
Auto locate (Addons) or Locate visitors (Google Maps)	Turns the feature on or off.
Nearby distance	The largest distance for suggested locations, and the starting distance of the from you filter on listing pages. It is in kilometres or miles, following Measurement Units in Settings › General. The default is 100.

Choosing the distance

Pick a distance that matches how far people travel for your kind of listings: 10 to 30 for a city marketplace, 50 to 100 for a region, more for a whole country. If the window on the home page is empty for many visitors, the distance is too small or your locations are missing coordinates.

Troubleshooting

The browser never asks for the location. The site isn’t opened with https, the add-on is off, or the visitor blocked location access for your site in their browser settings earlier.

The window doesn’t appear after allowing. None of your locations with coordinates is within the distance. Add coordinates to your locations or increase the distance.

Distances look wrong. Check the coordinates of the location or listing. A latitude and longitude swapped, or a missing minus sign, puts a place on the other side of the world.

Locations — set up locations and their coordinates.
Maps — connect Google Maps.
Interactive map — let visitors pick their region on a map instead.