Nexus Address Search - A guide

💡Motivation

Our goal is to enhance the user experience for property searches by making address search more accurate, flexible, and intuitive. The previous search dropdown was limited to 20 suggestions and lacked clear indication of whether a result was a suburb, street, or property making it harder for users to zero in on their target data. User feedback also told us that we needed to support inputs such as postcodes and New Zealand Territorial Authorities (e.g., Southland).

The improved Address Search directly addresses these gaps by supporting a broader range of inputs, clearly displaying suggestion types, allowing search by Territorial Authority and postcode, and returning more relevant results — ultimately helping users find the right property or properties faster.

📌 Overview

The new Address Search experience introduces several enhancements designed to improve accuracy, usability, and speed.

Key changes and enhancements include:

• New dedicated Address search tab – A focused tab for property address search, supporting input types such as street, suburb, postcode, and Territorial Authorities.

• Support for postcode search – Users can search for all properties associated with a specific postcode.

• Support for Territorial Authority search – We have introduced enhanced functionality that allows users to search for properties within Territorial Authorities in New Zealand.

• Clearer autocomplete suggestions – Dropdown suggestions results are labeled by type (e.g., Address, Street, Suburb, Postcode) to enhance clarity.

• Fuzzy search support for partial inputs – Users can enter partial or incomplete search terms, and the suggestions matches them with relevant results, significantly reducing search friction when full details are unknown.

• Multi-unit "all" search – Users can input a primary address (e.g., 123 Example Street) to search for all associated units. This enhancement significantly improves the discoverability of multi-unit properties, building on the existing functionality available in the universal search tab.

• Multiple search terms – Users can now search for and select multiple suburbs, postcodes, streets, or Territorial Authorities directly from the main search bar on the Address tab. Each search term appears as a clearly visible "chip" for easy management. For example, users can enter "Mount Eden," select it, then continue adding further terms like "Grey Lynn," or "Parnell." After selecting the first "chip', the search suggestions will be restricted to the same category. (For instance, if the first selection is a suburb, subsequent suggestions will include only suburbs.)

• Improved search logic and ranking – Smarter matching prioritises high-confidence and relevant results.

• Infinite Scroll on the Address Tab – Users can seamlessly scroll to view all additional results beyond the first 20, allowing for greater user selection within extensive result sets.

These updates are part of the broader Nexus Search improvement initiative and are designed to further enhance Nexus' ability to find the facts that matter, faster.

🔧 How It Works

• Address tab
  Use the dedicated Address tab to search for location-based data.

• Supported input types
  You can search using:

  • Full property addresses (e.g., “123 Example Street”) takes a user straight to the property page

  • Street names

  • Suburbs

  • Postcodes

  • Territorial Authorities, click here to see all territorial authorities in New Zealand. 

• Autocomplete and fuzzy search

  • Suggestions appear dynamically as you type, supporting both complete and partial inputs (e.g., typing "Parn" will suggest "Parnell").

  • Clearly labeled suggestions by type (e.g., Territorial Authority, Suburb, Street, Property, Postcode, Multi-Address).

  • The most relevant fuzzy-matched suggestions appear at the top.

• Multi-Address Search

  • Looking for all units at a specific property? Simply enter the primary address, like 123 Example Street, into the search bar.

  • At the top of the suggestions, you'll see a Multi-Address (All) option. Click on this to see all the units associated with that address. You'll also see a few individual units listed as Property below it, but these are just a sample, not the complete list.

• Multiple search terms support

  • Add multiple values of the same type (e.g., multiple suburbs) in one search

  • Each search term becomes a "chip" for easy management

  • After the first "chip", only results of that same type will appear

  • If there are too many chips, extras are summarised as +2 more or + filters to keep things tidy

• Infinite scroll

  • Scroll through the dropdown to see more suggestions