Featured placements in directory and search

Featured placements are paid slots that promote your Investigator profile to the top of NearbySpy's directory and search results within a specific geographic area. They are one of the few tools on the platform where additional spend directly maps to additional visibility, so this article explains exactly what they do, what they do not do, and how to buy them.

What a Featured placement is

Each Featured assignment ties three things together: an Elite-eligible Investigator profile, a geographic area, and an active subscription. While all three are valid, your profile renders in the Featured slot at the top of directory pages and search results that fall inside that area. Outside the assigned area, your profile ranks normally.

Eligibility

• You must be on the Elite plan. Featured placements are an Elite-only purchase. See What the Elite plan unlocks.
• Your public profile must be complete enough to render — at minimum a name, photo, license badge where applicable, and at least one specialty. Incomplete profiles cannot be featured.
• The geographic area must be one the platform indexes (city, county, or specific service area). Very small or very large areas may not be selectable.

How ranking works with Featured

Featured placement reserves the top slot on a result page. It does not affect your underlying organic ranking — see How Investigator search and filters work for how the base score is calculated. When your Featured assignment expires, your profile drops back to wherever it would naturally rank.

Buying a placement

1. Open the Billing area in your Investigator dashboard and choose Featured placements.
2. Pick the area you want to cover. The picker will show whether the slot is currently available or already held by someone else.
3. Choose the duration. Placements run on a monthly cycle by default and renew automatically until you cancel.
4. Confirm the price. Featured placements bill through Authorize.Net like the rest of NearbySpy's payments.
5. Submit and verify the assignment in your Billing area. Active assignments take effect within minutes — there is a short cron-driven window for cache and search index updates.

Limits and overlap

Each Featured slot in a given area is held by one Investigator at a time. If the slot you want is taken, you can join a waitlist or pick an adjacent area. You can hold multiple Featured assignments at once across different areas — they are billed and renewed independently. There is no contractual minimum length; you can cancel before the next renewal cycle.

What Featured does not change

• It does not influence private dashboard rankings or anything inside a Case.
• It does not change how Reviews work — see How reviews work on profiles and in the dashboard.
• It does not bypass the platform's verification rules. Profiles flagged for review or with expired licenses cannot be featured.

Cancelling

From Billing, open the placement and choose Cancel. The slot stays active through the end of the current paid cycle, then releases. The slot is then available for another Investigator to claim. See Understanding Billing for where the charge appears in your history.