You can control the default search restrictions of your website, if you have Admin level permissions on your account. This includes limiting the available search areas, adjusting the initial default search map, and choosing what types of listings you wish to display on your website.
This can be found in your IDX Control panel, under the Settings tab > SEARCH.
Video Tutorial
You can also find a video tutorial of these instructions.
Warning: This settings page is incredibly powerful. Please proceed with caution when making any changes to this page as it will greatly affect the listings shown on your website.
Consumer-Facing Search Interface
You'll notice right away that the interface is very familiar: we've made it easy to set up your default search view by providing you the exact same interface you would see on the site itself.
The first item to update is what search experience you would like your leads to have by choosing the search form. Showcase IDX offers you two different styles of home search: Streamlined or Advanced. They can both be great and are optimized for your exact situation to customize your website.
In choosing between the two search forms, you'll noticed the Default Search Appearance change based on your selection:
Streamlined Search Form
This search form has a lot of filters that someone might use when looking for a home. The filters are under a MORE button that contains 'Listing Filters' (For Sale, For Rent, search by MLS ID, days online, open houses, etc), 'Must-Have Amenities' and 'Property Type' filters (including lot size, year built, school district, etc).
Note
If you are using more than one MLS feed on your website: we recommend using the Streamlined Search Form. We have optimized the Streamlined search for your clients searching on your website on mobile and across different MLSs to pull all relevant listings.
For example, selecting the waterfront amenity will ensure that homes with a type of waterfront are shown in the search and this will pull in listings from each of your MLS feeds.
Advanced Search Form
This search form has most of the same filters that the Streamlined search form has- but also has niche or more specific filters found separated under buckets like General, Interior, Exterior, and Community Features. The filters depend on what the MLS provides to us.
Note
If you are using only a single MLS: this can be a great version of the search to try. This Advanced Search may allow us to integrate a few additional search features depending on the data available from your MLS.
You can still select this search type if using multiple MLSs but may not have certain MLS-specific data available for every market.
Default Search Appearance
The default search appearance allows you to provide an initial search for your consumers as a jumping off point. You can have this search be defined by location and/or any of the other available filters. Consumers can always reset these filters to conduct their own search.
Choices made here do not apply site-wide restrictions to only these parameters. If you do want site-wide restrictions, you can apply these under Search Restrictions.
You may want to use a polygon search in the Default Search Appearance map if you are attempting to limit listings in the search results to a specific area but still want consumers to search other areas.
Results Sorting & Results Type
You can also change the sorting of search results by adjusting the Results Sorting section under the map.
- Sort By: Days Online, Year Built, Lot Size, Square Feet, Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Price Change, Price or Map Center
- Sort Direction: Ascending or Descending
- Results Type: Grid or List format
Changing the results sorting not only re-orders the listings in the results, but also changes the way the listings look on the map.
Search Restrictions
In addition to the Default Search Results appearance, you can also include site-wide search restrictions using the Search Restrictions section:
Warning: USE CAUTION WHEN USING SEARCH RESTRICTIONS For example, if you use location filtering to choose a specific city, no listings from any other city will display in the results on website. Additionally, this applies to any of the other filters chosen in this section: sale price filters, sale type filters, listing type filters property type filters, and status type filters.
Location Filtering
The Location filters really should only be used if you have a limited search area (such as counties or zip codes) and do not want any other listings from anywhere else to show on your site.
Location filtering options are very powerful and do not take into account variations of location names in certain MLS feeds.
For example: city names with the "Fort" prefix may be in the MLS under a variety of names - Ft. Jones, Fort Jones, FT Jones, Ft Jones, therefore you would want to select each variation.
Additional Filtering
Sale Price, Sale Type, Listing Type, Property Type, and Status filters can give you finite control over what types of listings are displayed on your site.
- Only deal with high-end real estate? Use the Sale Price filter to enter pricing restrictions on your site.
- Don't deal with rental properties? Uncheck the "For Rent" Sale Type Filter and all rentals will disappear off your site and will NOT be indexed by Google.
- Don't want to display commercial data? Uncheck the commercial Property Type Filter to remove them from your site.