I travel a lot on business and really like Yelp, but when i do a “nearby” search it always seems to show me things in random order, not by distance. That’s dumb. How do I get the results to be ordered by how far they are from my current location?
Well, it’s not “dumb” that they organize the results that way, in my opinion at least, just a poorly chosen default. Or, perhaps, it’s a good default and we are the odd guys out who prefer something different? In any case, I have talked with other people and heard the same complaint too. In fact, just recently I was in Las Vegas at a trade show and when I suggested to a colleague we use Yelp to find a good place nearby he complained of the same thing: the results aren’t organized by distance.
Turns out that it’s actually pretty easy to change that, but I haven’t figured out how to change the default search to always sort by distance in Yelp. Perhaps that’s something they could add down the road…
In any case, I’ll show you how I reorganized the results on my iPhone.
To start, here’s a Yelp “nearby” search:
If you look closely, you’ll see that the places are 0.1 mi, then 0.09mi, then 0.7mi, then 0.9mi. Obviously not by distance or the Village Seafood Buffet would have been the #2 match, not #3. (the very first one, Nine Fine Irishmen, is a paid advertisement — hence the yellow background — so it’s going to show up when I’m in the region regardless of how I sort the results).
Notice the buttons along the bottom too. This result is from tapping “Nearby”, in case you haven’t done that before.
Before we reorganize the results, however, tap on “Map” to see everything shown on a map. It’s my favorite view:
Now let’s fix this crazy organization!
To change it, tap on “Filter” on the top left.
Your temptation is probably to go straight for “Distance”, but below it is the category you want to change: “Sort by”.
The Sort By criterion defaults to “best match”, whatever that is, but tapping on it reveals other options:
Ahhh…. so there are four options: Best Match, Distance, Rating and Most Reviewed. Each can be beneficial, allowing you to answer questions like “what’s the best rated place near me?” and “which place has garnered the most reviews, good or bad?” but for what you seek, tap on the check circle adjacent to “Distance”.
Now tap on “Search” on the top right again and you’ll go back to map view, but this time the results are sorted by distance, not “best match”:
Ahhh, that’s better. To get to the list view, tap on… surprise! “List” on the top right.
Now go find a good place that’s close and have a lovely meal.