?- Weighed placement in Search results

I know on many dating sites, members that pay get better placement in the matchmaking search results of others.  Is something like this already incorporated into the code, or is there an existing solution?

What I'd ideally be looking for is a factor of 20% being added in the algorithm based on membership level (those who pay are moved up a bit in the results, but are not automatically vaulted to the top in any kind "featured" spot.

Thanks

I find it very hard to believe I'm the first one to think of weighted results in the returns of match making results in dolphin.....

ponderous 

for as much a people are interested in monetizing their sites, and this is a method that many prominent sites (ie, dating, matchmaking, etc. that offer being more prominently featured in other member's search results either on a one-off basis or as part of a paid membership tier) that dolphin communities seem to be trying to emulate are utilizing as a push for paid membership, I'm more than a little surprised that there is no readily apparent answer to my question.....either that or you kids have this all figured out and are keeping the answer to a potential revenue stream from this no0b.

To be honest. The entire matching system in dolphin is really not very good.

And i also don't use it at all.

I have been here over 5 years, and i have never seen such a request brought up in the forums. So yea, maybe you are the first to ask.

This is interesting and brings to mind Google's weighted search results which got them in a bit of trouble; not that it would happen to you because your site would not be a search engine.  Years ago, if one recalls, Google was placing sites that paid at the top of the page without any indication that they were "loading" the results.  Some companies noticed what Google was doing and brought action against them.  The end results is what you see in a Google search, the list to the right of those paying for placement and the coloured search results at the top of the listings of those paying.

You might want to consider something similar in your weighted results or you may risk alienating those that don't have premium memberships.  Perhaps along the line of what Google does.  This will not be something that can quickly be added.  You should post a job for this as it will require some changes, and maybe some major changes, to the matching search feature.

 dean,

thx for the reply.

to be honest, the matchmaking is the core component of our site and the reason we decided to use dolphin in the first place (otherwise I would have gone with social engine or phpFox instead),  that said, my developer is working of some customization to enhance the whole matchmaking component and make it work in a way tailored for our site.

also, I try to do my homework prior to starting a thread.  if this question was asked and answered previously, I wasn't able to find it (so you are probably right that it hasn't been asked before).  while my developer can make this adjustment, it would save both time and money if he didn't have to reinvent the wheel to do it, thus my inquiry 

all that said, it still is a bit ponderous to me that no one has attempted to address this as it is both a quality monetization opportunity and is a prominent feature on many large dating/matchmaking sites out there.  imho, it should be part of the core program functionality

 noted, but our site will not openly differentiate premium (paying) members from basic (non-paying) members, plus there will be multiple ways of earning premium membership without directly paying for it. 

adding a slight factor to the weighting of the matchmaking results for those members who pay would not necessarily vault them to the top, but they would appear a bit higher in the results thus increasing the value they derive from our site.  in other words, if a member runs a search based on criteria X and two other members come up equally as a match, the paying member would come up in the search results before the non-paying member