How Search and Location Detection Work

What this covers

How Allsorts Directory decides which city's results to show you, and how category pages are organized.

Why it works this way

Typing your own city every time you search is friction nobody needs. Every category page (e.g. "Plumbers") tries to detect your approximate location automatically and takes you straight to the results for your city.

When automatic detection doesn't kick in

If your network doesn't expose a location signal (common on some local networks or VPNs), you'll land on a page listing every province and its cities instead — pick yours from there. Detected location is always matched against a real city we actually have data for; you're never redirected to a page that doesn't exist.

How to search a different city

Open any category page and pick a different city or province from the list, or go directly to a URL like `/plumbers/cape-town`.