Introducing Local Rank

Published on March 21, 2018
Yen Lim
Former Chief Product Officer

What is it?

Our newest way to rank events is called Local Rank. While our existing PHQ Rank indicates an event’s potential impact independent of its location, the Local Rank specifically considers impact of an event on its surroundings. In other words, it’s the potential impact of an event on its local area.

Why did we create this new rank?

We designed this new rank to help industries such as air travel, accommodation, and transportation identify events that are highly impactful on their local community, even if they would seem insignificant on a global stage. Important events that are happening in small cities and towns or other less built up areas can easily be overlooked, as their PHQ Rank is often significantly smaller than important events in more built up areas.

Through our research and analysis we found a number of events in small cities and towns that have a major impact on the local economy, as well as industries such as air travel. For instance, the annual Food & Wine Classic Festival in Aspen, Colorado usually causes a significant increase in arrivals through Aspen–Pitkin county airport. This event has a relatively low PHQ Rank value of 57 (low ‘Significant’), but it has a significantly higher Local Rank value of 83 (Major) due to the small size of Aspen.

How can you use it?

Like the PHQ rank, the Local Rank is a numeric value on a logarithmic scale between 0 to 100. It is included in events returned by our API in the “local_rank” property.

You can sort event search results on Local Rank by using the “local_rank” property in the “sort” request parameter.

Local Rank values are split into 5 levels. You can filter event search results by these levels using the “local_rank_level” search parameter. You can also use the “local_rank.*” parameter to get events within a certain rank range. Use this if you want to fetch events with a more specific local rank value.

Note that as it relies on events occurring at specific locations, Local Rank only applies to certain categories of events.