Recommender Use Case: Geo-targeted recommendations

On the Recommender Advanced plan, Marfeel Recommender takes each reader’s location into account. Articles about the reader’s area move up and local stories about distant places move down, with nothing to configure. When you want a module that is entirely about the reader’s area, three more tools help you build it.

Tool	What it does	When to use it
Location signal	Adjusts relevance-based ranking profiles lightly toward the reader’s area	Always on with the Advanced plan
Local ranking profile	Gives location far more weight, so most of the module is about the reader’s area	Regional blocks such as “News near you”
Location filters	Only recommends articles from the reader’s country, region, subregion or city, or from one you choose	Modules that must stay inside one area
Reader location in layouts	Prints the reader’s city, subregion, region or country in the template	Titles such as “More news from Girona”

How location matching works

The recommender compares two things: where the reader is, and which places each article is about.

Where the reader is

Marfeel estimates the reader’s city, subregion, region and country from their IP address on every request. IP geolocation is usually accurate to a city or a few tens of kilometers. Readers on a VPN or on some mobile networks can appear somewhere else.

What each article is about

Marfeel detects the places each article mentions, such as cities, regions and countries, and classifies the article’s scope as local, national or international. You don’t need to tag anything.

The scope sets how strongly location acts on the article:

Article scope	Effect of location
Local	Strongest: moves up for readers nearby and down for readers far away
National	Weaker
International	Weaker still
No detected place	Barely affected in most profiles; ranked below stories about the reader’s area with Local

Location can only move articles where Marfeel detected a place. Coverage depends on how clearly your articles name the places they are about, so it varies from site to site.

The location signal in every ranking profile

With the Advanced plan, the Balanced, Popular, Trendy, Similar, Highest CTR and Personalized ranking profiles apply location as a light adjustment on top of their usual signals. You don’t need to configure anything.

Example: for a reader in Girona,

• A local story about Girona’s city council moves up.
• A local story about a town 800 km away moves down.
• A national politics story moves much less in either direction.

Most Read, Latest and Oldest order articles by their own fixed criteria and don’t use location.

Build a regional module with the Local profile

The Local ranking profile gives the reader’s location far more weight than any other profile. Within the reader’s area, it still orders articles by popularity and click-through rate, so the strongest local stories come first. One experience serves every area: readers in Girona get Girona stories, and readers in Tarragona get Tarragona stories.

1. Open the experience in Experience Manager.
2. On the Content tab, click the three-dot options of the Recommender feed, then Edit.
3. In Ranking profile, select Local.
4. Save the feed, then save the experience.

Local works best when you publish local news for the areas where your readers are. When the reader's area has few recent stories, the module fills up with stories from nearby areas first, then with the rest of the site.

Local is available on the Advanced plan. On other plans it appears in the Ranking profile list with an upgrade badge. Experiences that already set profile=local in the advanced parameters keep working as before.

Restrict recommendations by location

Location filters are strict: only articles from the chosen area qualify.

1. In the Recommender feed, go to Restrictions.
2. Add a Country, Region, Subregion or City filter.
3. Choose Same to match the reader’s own area, or pick a specific value.

If not enough articles match, the recommender completes the list with other content.

Filters combine with any ranking profile. For example, Latest with a Region filter set to Same gives each reader the newest stories from their region.

	Local ranking profile	Location filter
How strict	Prefers the reader’s area, then nearby areas, then the rest	Only articles from the area, then other content if there aren’t enough
Distance	Nearer articles rank higher	Exactly the level you pick, nothing in between
Best for	“News near you” blocks on the home page	Modules that must stay inside one region or country

Show the reader’s location in a layout

Recommender layouts can print where the reader is, for example in the module title.

Attribute	Example value
{{geo.city}}	Barcelona
{{geo.subRegion}}	Barcelona
{{geo.region}}	Catalonia
{{geo.country}}	Spain
{{geo.countryCode}}	ES

Always add a fallback for readers whose location is unknown:

{{#geo.city}}
<h2>More news from {{geo.city}}</h2>
{{/geo.city}}
{{^geo.city}}
<h2>More news</h2>
{{/geo.city}}

Place names come from the geolocation database and may not match your site's language, for example Catalonia instead of Catalunya.

Preview recommendations as a reader from another city

1. Open the experience preview.
2. Click Simulate profile, then Add new simulated profile.
3. Click Set Property, choose City, and pick a city.

The preview shows the recommendations a reader in that city gets.

Going deeper

• Ranking profile types explained
• Ranking signals explained
• Recommender setup and configuration guide
• Build and customize recommender layouts

Which plans include geo-targeted recommendations?

The location signal and the Local ranking profile are part of the Marfeel Recommender Advanced plan. On other plans, recommendations are ranked without the reader’s location and Local appears in the ranking profile list with an upgrade badge.

How does Marfeel know where a reader is?

Marfeel estimates the reader’s city, subregion, region and country from their IP address. This is usually accurate to a city or a few tens of kilometers, so it works for regional and city modules but not for neighborhood-level targeting.

Do I need to tag my articles with locations?

No. Marfeel detects the places each article is about and classifies its scope as local, national or international. Articles with no detected place are barely moved in most profiles, and the Local profile ranks them below stories about the reader’s area.

What is the difference between the Local ranking profile and a location filter?

The Local ranking profile prefers articles about the reader’s area and falls back to nearby and other stories. A location filter only accepts articles from the area you choose and fills any remaining slots with other content.