How we rank managers

The organic order

On every region and suburb page, managers are sorted by four things, in this order of weight:

1. Verified status. A manager who has claimed their listing and confirmed their details ranks above one who hasn’t. Claiming is free, so this rewards engagement, not money.
2. Google rating × log(review count). A 4.9 from 120 reviews beats a 5.0 from 3. The rating and count are combined across every Google listing we can tie to the manager, as explained below, and link to each listing on Google. We do not copy Google reviews onto this site.
3. Profile completeness. Published fees, listed services, contact details, founding year and portfolio size each add a little. Owners want this information, so managers who supply it rank higher.
4. Recency. A tiny tie-breaker for recently updated profiles.

The code that does this is a short function and we’re happy to show it to anyone who asks.

Google ratings

Some managers keep all their reviews on one Google listing. Others have them spread across a booking brand, an older business name, a second office, or the holiday resorts they run, each with its own listing. Counting only one listing would undercount those managers, so we combine them, using the same rule for everyone:

• A listing counts only with evidence. We include a Sunshine Coast Google listing when its own website or Google record ties it to the manager: the same phone number, a website that redirects to the manager’s, the manager’s email address, or the listing’s site saying it is part of or managed by them. A manager telling us a listing is theirs is not enough on its own.
• What we leave out. A parent real estate agency’s sales office, separately owned franchise offices, offices outside the Sunshine Coast, listings for single holiday homes (most have only a handful of reviews and we can’t find them all for everyone), and “partner” properties whose own site doesn’t name the manager.
• How they combine. The rating is the average weighted by each listing’s number of reviews, rounded to one decimal place. The count is the total. We show a rating only when the total is at least five reviews.
• No review is counted twice. Where one group runs several brands that we list separately, each brand’s entry counts only its own listings. Where two of our entries turned out to be the same business, we merged them.
• Labelled and linked. A combined figure says how many listings it covers, for example “4.6 on Google across 7 listings”, and the manager’s profile lists and links every one of them.

Resort listings mostly carry reviews from holiday guests, not from property owners. That is true of many single listings too, so it applies to everyone alike. We store only the identity of each Google listing, not its figures: ratings and counts are read from Google and refreshed weekly. They are Google’s, not ours.

Paid placement

There is none. Nothing on this site can be bought today: managers are listed free, claim free, and pay nothing to receive an owner enquiry. No manager has paid us anything.

If we ever introduce paid placement it will sit in a separate slot labelled as such, never mixed into the order above, and it will not change a manager’s rating, their position in that order, or which reviews we publish. That is a permanent commitment, not a description of a current product.

Reviews

No owner reviews are published yet. The site is new and nobody has left one. What follows is how they will be handled when they exist, not a description of something already on the page.

• We only publish reviews from owners we can contact. Every review is moderated by a person before it appears.
• We never remove or hide a negative review because a manager pays us. We remove reviews only if they are fake, defamatory, off-topic or breach the law.
• Fake or incentivised reviews are illegal under Australian Consumer Law. We keep an audit trail of every moderation decision.
• Managers can respond to reviews once a response feature is live. They cannot edit or delete them.

Fees and listing data

Fee figures are the manager’s published headline rate from their own website at the date shown on the profile. Where a manager hasn’t published a fee we say “not published” rather than guess. Claimed managers can update their fees; we spot-check changes against their public site.

Leads

When an owner requests proposals we send the enquiry to up to 3 managers who cover the suburb, in the organic order above. Nobody can buy their way up that list or into it. Owners are told this on the form.

Who pays for the site

Nobody does. Owners never pay. Managers pay nothing either: the listing is free, claiming is free, and owner enquiries are free. The site is funded by its owner while it is new.

That is not a permanent arrangement and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If we start charging managers, they will hear it from us before anything is billed, nothing will be charged without their agreement, and it will not change the order above. See the manager page.

Corrections

If anything on a profile is wrong, email hello@staymanaged.com.au. We fix errors within two business days and note the change on the profile.