Badges are used to organise listings, and to boost listings in search results.
Students can search listings by bagde type, e.g. "inspected", "university-approved". It's also possible to give students a shortcut link to a search page that contains all the active listings with a certain badge, for example if you wanted to highlight a badge on your homepage.
Listings with a badge appear higher in search results. Two badges will appear even higher, and so on.
To create a badge, go to Admin > Settings > Badges.
Badges can be created according to any criteria that suits your objectives. Badges have been used for things such as highlighting enviromentally friendly housing, university-inspected housing, university-affiliated housing, security features among many other use-cases.
Each bagde can be customised with a unique colour and icon to make it more recognisable.
Badges can easily be assigned when viewing a listing in admin. Simply click "award badge" at the top of any listing.
You may choose to award a badge to a provider when you want to highlight all their listings in some way, e.g. for university-affiliated housing, or for providers who have completed some sort of induction. When you award a badge to a provider, the badge will appear on all their listings.
This badge lets you feature listings that deserve some extra attention. For more info, see this article.
Tags are similar to Badges, but they don't boost listings in search results and they can't be customised with a colour and icon. Tags are also useful for organising listings, and it's possible to create "admin only" tags that can be used to filter listings in admin, without being seen by students or providers.