Every page on Polish Perfect has an organic order, set by rules you can read on the rankings page, and a few labeled spots above or beside it that a school can take with a budget. That budget is a Boost. This guide covers what it buys, every place it shows, how the price per tap is set, what it does and doesn't do to your organic position, and when a school should use it. The short version: a Boost is the fastest way onto a page, and a Boost that brings people who call is also the fastest way to earn the free spot underneath it.
What a Boost is
A Boost is a budget behind your school, or behind one of its posts. You pick where it shows, how far it reaches, a max per tap, and a monthly cap. From then on, your school takes a Sponsored spot on those pages whenever the auction puts it there, and you're charged only when someone taps it. Views are free.
- Where: the placements below. Each is a box in the wizard; pick one or all.
- How far: your city plus a radius of 5, 10 or 20 miles, or every city in your state, or the whole country. For a post, you can add cities outside the radius by name.
- How much: a max bid per tap, with a suggested bid from what other schools in that city are paying, and a monthly cap from five dollars. The campaign pauses itself at the cap and starts again next cycle.
- When: it starts the moment you launch, or on a date you set, and runs until you pause it or until an end date you choose.
- Free to start: every claimed school gets credit toward its first Boost, so the first taps cost nothing.
Boost lives in the dashboard of a claimed school. Nothing about it is required: claiming, the listing, posting and the organic order are all free, and stay free.
Every place it shows
The wizard sells three things: Sponsored Listings, Sponsored Posts. Here is each spot they buy, and a real page where you can see it.
Sponsored Listings
Your city page
Two Sponsored spots at the very top of the city page, above the organic list, and a third between the fourth and fifth organic result. Each is marked Featured. Your organic listing stays where the order puts it, so you're on the page twice. The same spots exist on every city page in your radius, and statewide or nationwide if you choose.
See a city pageA competitor's page
Pick specific school pages, and your school takes the Sponsored spot at the top of the Near You cards on each one: the first of three, in front of the organic neighbors. The reader comparing them sees you before they scroll.
Open the school directory
Sponsored Posts
The feed, for a post
Boost a post and it becomes Featured: the badge, and a higher place in the Nearest sort for every owner and tech scrolling near you. It never pushes your organic post out; the Featured one is extra.
How the feed worksThe public deal, job and referral pages
A boosted post also takes the Sponsored section on the public city page for its kind, the page people without an account land on from Google. Deals, jobs and referral offers each have one per city, and you can choose cities outside your radius.
See the deals pages
Two rules hold on every page. One business holds one Sponsored spot per page, so two campaigns on the same school never crowd a competitor out. And a Sponsored spot is in addition to your organic listing, never instead of it. The reader sees you at the top, and again where the order puts you.
How the price per tap is set
The spots are auctioned, and you never pay more than your max. Each school competing for a page is ranked by its bid times a quality score. The winner pays just enough to stay above the next school, plus a cent. If no one else is bidding on a page, you pay the floor, and the wizard tells you so.
- The quality score is half how often your ad is tapped when it's shown, a quarter how complete your page is, and the rest your rating with your review count, and how long the campaign has been running. A complete, well-rated school that people tap wins the same spot for less.
- The floor rises with the number of schools bidding in a city, and a statewide or national target starts higher than a city one.
- A tap is billed once; a repeat tap from the same place in the same window isn't billed again.
The same thing that wins the auction wins the organic list
Completeness, rating and reviews lower your price per tap here, and they also set your organic position. There is no version of Boost that works better on a thin page.
How a Boost can move you up the free list
Think of how a product that sells well on Amazon climbs the search results: the sales come first, and the ranking follows, whether the first sales came from an ad or not. Polish Perfect works the same way, on purpose. A Boost buys you a Sponsored spot and nothing else. It does not change your tier or add a point to your score. But the organic order scores how your page converts, and it does not care where a visitor came from.
The loop
- 1Boost puts you in the Sponsored spot
- 2More people open your page
- 3More of them call or open your website
- 4Your conversion score rises against the city average
- 5Your organic position rises with it
- 6More people open your page without the Boost
- 1
- 01Every school that's claimed sits above every one that isn't. Nothing you buy changes that; claiming is free.
- 02Within the claimed tier, the score is how complete your page is, scaled by how recently it changed, plus a bonus for the first weeks after claiming, plus a conversion score.
- 03The conversion score is two numbers multiplied: the share of your weekly page views that turn into calls, directions or website taps, and how many of those you get compared with the average claimed school in your city, capped at three times. Both have to be strong; a lot of views with few taps scores low.
- 04A Boost adds page views. If those visitors calls, directions or website taps, both numbers rise, and your organic position rises with them. When you pause the Boost, the score stays as long as the conversions do.
That's the whole trick, and it cuts both ways. A Boost in front of the right people, landing on a page with photos, hours, a phone number and the details they came for, pays twice: once in the taps you bought, and again in the organic position the taps earn. A Boost landing on a bare page sends visitors who leave, which lowers your rate and your organic score. Fix the page first, then buy the traffic. The rankings page has the full list of what counts.
A second loop, inside the auction
The more often your ad is tapped when shown, the higher its quality score, and the less you pay for the same spot. A Boost that's working gets cheaper as it runs.
Start with the free credit
Claim your school, open Boost in the dashboard, pick the pages, set a cap. The first taps come out of the credit, not your card.
What you see while it runs
Each campaign has its own page in the dashboard: impressions, taps, the tap rate, what you've spent in total and this month, and the conversions those taps led to, split into calls, directions or website taps on your page within a day of the tap. A table under it shows every city, page or competitor you're targeting with its own impressions, taps, spend and conversions, a suggested bid for that market, and a switch to pause it. Change the cap, pause, resume or end the campaign from the same page.
Read it the way the organic order does: taps are the cost, conversions are the point. A target with taps and no conversions is the one to pause or to fix the page for.
When a school should use it
A Boost is for the weeks that fill a class. Four that come up for schools:
- The two weeks before an enrollment deadline. Target your city page and the cities in your radius, set the end date to the deadline, and every call it brings counts toward your organic position for the next intake. The student inquiries page covers what a prospective student sees when they land.
- An open house. Post it to the feed free, Boost it for its week, and it's Featured for every tech near you and in the Sponsored section on the city deals page.
- The school across town. Target its page and you're the first Near You card on it, in front of every student comparing the two.
- An instructor opening. Jobs are free to post; a Boost for the first week puts it in the Sponsored section on the city jobs page and in the feed of every working tech nearby.
A new claim gets a boost of its own in the organic order for its first weeks. That's the cheapest window to run a Boost in: the organic lift and the paid spot stack, and the calls you earn carry the position after both fade.
What a Boost doesn't do
- It doesn't change the organic order directly. Tier and score come only from claiming, the page, freshness and conversions. The visitors a Boost brings count; the Boost itself doesn't.
- It doesn't move an unclaimed school above a claimed one. Claim first.
- It doesn't push anyone's organic listing or post off the page. The Sponsored spots are extra rows.
- It doesn't charge for views, doesn't run past your cap, and doesn't run past your end date.
- It doesn't buy reviews, and your rating with its review count is part of the quality score that sets your price.
The checklist
Everything above as a list, in the order that moves the most.
- 01Claim your schoolBoost and the free credit live behind it
- 02Make the page worth the tap first: photos, hours, phone, the details people call aboutA Boost on a thin page lowers your conversion rate
- 03Start with your own city page and the free creditSet a cap you'd forget about
- 04Boost for the two weeks before an enrollment deadlineSet the end date to the deadline
- 05Boost the open house post for its weekFeatured in the feed and the Sponsored section on the city deals page
- 06Check the campaign page after a week: calls, directions, website tapsIf taps aren't converting, fix the page before raising the bid
- 07Add the competitors' pages you lose toThe first Near You card on each
- 08Use the suggested bid, then pause the targets that don't convertOne spot per business per page, so spread the budget