How to set up user-field search today, and which fields to avoid
User fields are profile questions you add for your members, such as "Seller type", "Languages spoken" or "Company". On a current Yclas site you create them in the admin panel's user fields settings, and each field has a type: short text, long text, number, decimal number, date, select, radio, checkbox, email, country or language. Each field also has five switches:
- Show on sign-up: asks the question on the registration form.
- Show on profile: displays the answer on the member's public profile.
- Required: members cannot register without answering.
- Searchable: the field becomes a filter, so visitors can find ads posted by members with that answer.
- Admin privileged: only an admin can see and edit it. These fields are left out of the public field list, so they never show up as search filters, which makes them the right place for internal notes such as "Verified ID checked".
On new sites, which use the Nova theme, every searchable user field appears as its own filter in the search panel. Select, radio and checkbox fields work best as filters because visitors pick from fixed answers instead of guessing the spelling of free text. Good examples are "Private / Business" on a car or property site, "Languages spoken" on a tutoring or services marketplace, "Country" on a cross-border site, or "Verified dealer" as a checkbox.
Fields you should not make searchable
Letting buyers filter sellers by who they are is powerful, and in some niches it is illegal or risky. Check these before you switch "Searchable" on:
- Sensitive personal data (EU and UK). Article 9 of the GDPR lists special categories whose processing is prohibited unless an exception applies: racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic and biometric data, health, and sex life or sexual orientation. Collecting such data as a profile field, let alone publishing it as a filter, needs a legal basis such as explicit consent. In most marketplaces the simple answer is not to ask.
- Housing ads (US). The Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3604(c), makes it unlawful to publish any advertisement for the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates a preference based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin. A rental site that lets visitors filter landlords or listings by those traits is building that preference into the search.
- Job boards (US). The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages applicants because of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and transgender status), national origin, age 40 or older, disability or genetic information. Its own example is an ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates".
Regulators do act on platforms, not only on advertisers. In the US Department of Justice case against Meta, the court entered the settlement on June 27, 2022. Meta paid a $115,054 civil penalty (the maximum under the Fair Housing Act at the time), stopped its "Special Ad Audience" tool for housing ads, and agreed not to offer housing advertisers targeting options that describe or relate to protected characteristics.
A simple rule of thumb: make a field searchable when it describes what the member offers (business or private seller, languages, service area, certifications), and keep it private or don't collect it when it describes who the member is. The hair-colour example above can make sense for a casting or modelling marketplace, where appearance is part of the service, but the same kind of filter on a rental or jobs site would be a liability.
