How It Works

• Content quality
• Ranking of listings
• Choosing locations
• Adding a listing
• Privacy settings
• Location privacy
• Notifications of new listings
• Promoting a listing
• Dealing with listings you don't like

Content quality

Our approach to content is "by your community, for your community". We could just harvest a bunch of feeds to give you the illusion that we have lots of content, but most of it will be noise and the local relevance of it will be somewhat hit-and-miss. Placerama is about quality, not quantity, and we feel that you'll get the highest quality experience from individuals and local businesses creating (or linking to) locally relevant content themselves.

As a result, if there's not much (or any) locally relevant content here on your first visit we'll let you know when there is. Feel free to tell your community about the site to help get things going in your area.

Ranking of listings

The listings you see on your home page are ranked on distance, time and votes (see promoting a listing for more details). We want to provide you with content that is most locally relevant to you, which is why it's important to choose an accurate location for your profile.

Choosing locations

Placerama lists news items, events and classifieds locally relevant to you. When you first visit Placerama, we guess your location from your internet (IP) address using the GeoIP service from MaxMind and use that to display some relevant listings around that location.

The location we guess may only be accurate to a few miles or kilometres of where you actually are. If you want to get really relevant listings, e.g., on the scale of your neighborhood or street, you need to sign up and specify a location. You can do this by picking a location off the map, using an address lookup to narrow down your search.

Try it out for yourself:

Address:

Find Enter an address or location Find location for this address

 

This address is used to find your location - we don't store it against your profile.

Position

Note: you can drag the marker to the right place

Country

Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua & Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahama Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France France, Metropolitan French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard & McDonald Islands Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Islamic Republic of Iran Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Monserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Lucia Samoa San Marino Sao Tome & Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Pierre & Miquelon St. Vincent & the Grenadines Sudan Suriname Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad & Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks & Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom (Great Britain) United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America United States Virgin Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City State (Holy See) Venezuela Viet Nam Wallis & Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Yugoslavia Zaire Zambia Zimbabwe Unknown or unspecified country Select your country

Location:

 If this is wrong, click here We've guessed the location name from the map location, but sometimes we get it wrong so please change it if we have.

It's important to note that:

• We don't need to know if this is where you live or work, it's just a location that's useful to you. It may not be anywhere near your location of interest but the closer it is, the more relevant the listings you see.
• If you enter an address to help locate yourself, we do NOT store it.
• We don't supply your location to anyone else. See our privacy policy for more details.

Adding a listing

You can create a listing for anything you like (and for FREE), as long as you can choose a location and time for it. For example:

• You're having a garage sale this weekend you want to promote
• Your much loved pet cat is lost
• You just witnessed a car accident on a nearby street corner and want to report the incident
• You had a big crop of apples this year and want to give away the surplus
• Your school is having a fair this weekend and you want to let people in the community know about it

If you don't have any original content to add, you can always add listings that link to external sources such as local news articles or events. This way you can help other people become aware of them.

There are a couple of restrictions on when and where you can create listings to retain the local character of the site and to help reduce possible abuses:

• You can't create a listing more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the location you chose for your profile.
• If you change your profile location (you might be travelling or recently moved house), you need to wait 24 hours before adding new listings - think of it as a settling-in period!

Also, some special cases:

• Events listing in the past won't show up in the local search results. So if you've got an event that anyone can come along to and that runs from, say, 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, set the event time as 12:00 pm. If it starts at 9:00 am and entry is closed at that time, set the event time to 9:00 am (time ranges for events are on the list!)

Privacy settings

When you add a listing, the listing view page provides a link to your public profile page (you need to sign up to see this page). You can choose which (if any) of your profile details you want to make public in the privacy settings page. If you don't make any of your first name, last name or username public we won't show a link to your public profile page.

Location privacy

By default your precise location is kept private. For example, if you add a listing and choose your own location as the location of the listing:

• the listing location won't show on the local search map but will still appear in the text list.
• the location map on the listing view page won't display your precise location, but will display a scrambled location up to 1 kilometre from your exact location.

Also, if someone visits your public profile page they won't see a location map. You can change this setting on your privacy settings page.

Notifications of new listings

Because we're aiming for quality, rather than quantity, of listings, there may not be much content when you first visit the site. So, we'll provide you with email updates about new content if you don't find any locally relevant content when you first visit the site.

Promoting a listing

Depending on the number of Placerama of users around you, your listing will not initially be seen very far from the location you select for it - after all, it's mostly of relevance only to the people around you. If you want to make your listing visible to more people and for longer, you'll need to get other people to vote for it.

For example, if you're promoting a school fair, ask other members of the school community to vote for the listing so that more people in your community will see it.

Dealing with listings you don't like

While we do our best to keep spammers at bay, occasionally someone might post a listing that you feel is undesirable and that you don't want others in your community to see. In this case you can vote against that listing which will cause it to be ranked lower than other listings. If enough people vote against it, the listing will disappear from your home page but will still be visible in a separate "disputed" listings page. You can view this page via a link at the bottom of the home page.

More details on this process can by found here