Nearby Now for WordPress is an awesome way to add your real-time Nearby Now reviews and checkins, along with an eye-catching interactive service area heat-map to your website. Here’s a quickstart guide:

Heatmap

Our most powerful short-code, the heatmap includes:

1. A large interactive service area heat-map combined with interactive review markers.
2. A wide column of your reviews, properly coded so that search engines recognize them as reviews of your business.
3. A narrow column of your check-ins, along with related comments and photos.
4. A masonry tiled layout option for an even more modern look.
5. The option to paginate the results.

Place the heatmap on city-specific pages to provide for unique, rich, dynamic, and schema formatted content that is specific to that city in order to bolster rankings for each city your business services.

Please login to the admin portal and view the knowledgebase for a list of all available options with the heatmap short-code, as well as additional short code options.

If you have any questions or need any assistance with the plugins, you can email us at [email protected].

1. Install the plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Add your API token in the settings page – Login to admin.nearbynow.co and click the API tab to get your API Access Token
4. Place the heatmap short-code on a page or blog post: [heatmap city="Dallas" state="TX"]
5. Login to the admin portal and visit the knowledgebase to view the full short-code documentation

How do I find my API token?

Login to admin.nearbynow.co and click the API tab to get your API Access Token. Email us at [email protected] if you are having trouble and we’ll help you out.

Which short-code should I use?

Use the Heatmap short-code, it is the most powerful way to display your checkins and reviews on your site.

Can I use multiple short-codes on a single page?

No, this is not supported. Use the Heatmap short-code, it has everything you need to display your service-area heat-map, reviews, and Google reviews.

How does paging work on the heatmap?

When a city has more check-ins and reviews than fit on one page, the heatmap ends with a Next Page link, and every page after the first also has a Previous Page link. Page 2 of a page at /austin/ is /austin/?nn_page=2, page 3 is /austin/?nn_page=3, and so on. Each page lists different check-ins and reviews. On sites running Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or no SEO plugin, each page’s canonical tag points at that page, so search engines can index all of them.

Paging needs no short-code settings. To change the link text, add pagelinktext to the short-code: [heatmap city="Austin" state="TX" pagelinktext="More reviews"].

The parameter name, nn_page, is on the settings page. Change it only if another plugin on your site already uses nn_page. If a short-code sets its own pageparam, use the same name on the settings page so the canonical tags match.

Should I cache pages that use a Nearby Now short-code?

No. We recommend excluding them from page caching.

Nearby Now content is real-time. Every new check-in, photo, and review is fresh, location-specific content that search engines pick up on. When a page is served from a cache, crawlers see a stale snapshot and miss those updates, which blunts the SEO value the content is there to provide.

Caching also holds on to a bad render. If a request to our API fails, a cached copy of that page can keep serving the failed result long after the problem itself has cleared.

Our API already caches responses on our end, with a refresh interval tuned to your account, so your pages are not making expensive uncached requests on every load. A page cache layered on top adds little speed while costing you content freshness.

Exclude any page or post containing a Nearby Now short-code from your caching plugin, and from any full-page caching rules at your host or CDN.

How do I know whether a city has enough content for its own page?

The settings page has a Service Area Coverage table listing every city your crews have checked in to, busiest first, with the check-in and review counts behind it and a risk level: Insufficient, Thin, Adequate or Strong. Cities you have not built a page for yet appear too, so the same table tells you where to add one next.

If you edit a post or page containing a [heatmap], [serviceareareviewcombo] or [nationwidecombo] short-code for a city whose coverage is Insufficient or Thin, a notice at the top of the editor says so. Nothing is ever shown to your visitors.

The check-in and review levels behind those bands are our guidance, not thresholds published by Google.

I am using the serviceareareviewcombo short-code. Should I switch?

Yes. [serviceareareviewcombo] is deprecated. It was superseded in version 2.0 by [heatmap], which combines your service-area heat-map, check-ins, reviews, and Google reviews into a single short-code with a more modern, interactive display.

Your existing attributes carry over, so in most cases you can swap the short-code name and keep everything else: [heatmap city="Dallas" state="TX"]

3.2.0

• Heatmap paging now works without extra short-code settings. Page links use the nn_page parameter, which WordPress does not use itself. A saved page parameter of “page” is moved to nn_page automatically.
• Paged heatmap pages now carry one canonical tag that points at the page itself, on sites running Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO and on sites with no SEO plugin.
• Page links now keep working on sites that turn on Yoast SEO’s “Remove unregistered URL parameters” setting.
• Removed the “Site Uses Yoast SEO?” setting. It is no longer needed.
• Page links no longer carry tracking parameters from the visitor’s address, and they follow your site’s own address and protocol.
• Removed the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags from the page head. The page links carry them instead.
• Fixed the redirect from ?nn_page=1 on sites installed in a subdirectory, and a PHP warning on a heatmap short-code with no attributes.

3.1.0

• New Service Area Coverage table on the settings page: every city you have activity in, with its check-in and review counts and a thin-content risk level, ordered by check-in volume so it doubles as a list of pages worth building next.
• The post editor now warns you when a page uses a heatmap-family short-code for a city that does not yet have enough behind it to justify a dedicated page. Editor only – your visitors never see it.

3.0.3

• Improved handling of slow or interrupted API requests for a cleaner display on the page.
• Added diagnostic logging to help our support team troubleshoot connectivity issues.
• General code and compatibility improvements.
• Documentation: added guidance on page caching, and on moving from the serviceareareviewcombo short-code to heatmap.

3.0.2

• Paging updated to support Yoast and 3rd-party page builders.

3.0.1

• Paginated heatmap pages now output canonical and rel=next/prev tags for search engines.
• Requests for the first page are redirected to the canonical URL.
• New setting to customize the query parameter used for pagination.
• New setting for sites running Yoast SEO, so canonical tags are handed to Yoast instead of being duplicated.

3.0.0

• Paging is now supported! It is handled automatically but can also be configured via the short-code.

2.0.4

• Version Bump for WP 6.8

2.0.3

• Filter checkin content by image labels
• Version Bump for WP 6.5

2.0.1

• Heatmap Enhancements
• Version Bump for WP 6.4

2.0.0

Version 2.0 released!
All new short-code named heatmap with even more powerful interactive display and a modern look and feel

1.16.2

• Bug Fixes
• Version Bump for WP 6.1

1.16.1

• Bug Fixes

1.16.0

• Bug Fixes

1.15.0

• Added Google Reviews Shortcode

1.14.0

• Version Bump for WP 6.0
• Added Tags param for checkin/review/photogallery shortcodes

1.13.0

• Version Bump for WP 5.6

1.12.0

• New FAQ shortcode

1.11.2

• Fix asset directory

1.11.0

• Bug fixes

1.10.2

• Removing Open graph registration which is not required for the Nearby Now version

1.10.1

• Bug fixes

1.10.0

• Added shortcode for regional and nationwide maps
• Version Bump for WP 5.1

1.9.0

• Added shortcode for regional and nationwide maps
• Version Bump for WP 4.9

1.8.8

• Update to API v3 (Map Theme Support)

1.8.6

• Added ability to hide the mini-map on reviews
• Added ability to hide checkin photos

1.8.0

• Version Bump for WP 4.4

1.7.1

• Version Bump for WP 4.2

1.7.0

• Auto detection of Google Maps API
• Deferred loading of Google Maps API and Heatmap
• Encoded Polygons for faster service area loading and rendering

1.6.0

• Added ability to filter multiple cities for a single hyperlocal page
• Added ability to name the service area – used when multiple cities are specified

1.5.0

• Version Bump for WP 4.0
• Bug fixes and general code improvements

1.4.5

• Increase timeout threshold on plugin API calls

1.4.4

• API improvements

1.4.3

• Adjustment to the API endpoint

1.4.2

• API Modifications

1.4.1

• Version Bump for WP 3.9

1.4.0

• New Photo Gallery Plugin

1.3.5

• Improved Script Loading
• Scripts are now loaded in the footer
• Both scripts & styles are only loaded on pages that have the Nearby Now short-code

1.3.4

• WordPress compatibility version bump to 3.8

1.3.3

• Fix for Review City URL’s

1.3.2

• Trimming all whitespace on the API key which fixes some 400 errors; common when copy/pasting the API key from email or the web

1.3.1

• Audio Testimonial ShortCode name correction

1.3.0

• Added Audio Testimonial ShortCode
• Added technician email as a param to the combo ShortCode

1.2.0

• Removed our version of jQuery in favor the version that WordPress automatically loads
• WordPress compatibility version bump to 3.6

1.1.1

• Version 1.1.1 is a compatibility version bump

1.1.0

• Version 1.1.0 adds the powerful service area and review combination map, and several new parameters for all short codes

1.0.3

• Version 1.0.3 fixes a bug with the count parameter and also adds two new parameters. 1) Show Map and 2) Show Favorites

Show Map allows you to control the visibility of the map.
Show Favorites allows you to display only reviews that you’ve specifically marked as a favorite from the admin site

1.0.2

• Version 1.0.2 adds better documentation and an updated settings admin page

1.0.1

• Version 1.0.1 fixes a bug in the order that the plugin content is rendered to the browser

1.0

• Version 1.0 released!