Talos

Property Guard searches and returns a very large amount of structured but unclassified data every hour of every day: much more than any human could process.  Talos is used to instantly provide a classification of this data for your convenience.

Talos is the proprietary scoring system developed over the course of years of reviewing tens of thousands of individual listings for properties.  Under the hood, many complex evaluations leveraging different machine learning algorithms are combined into a mosaic that is used to guide an instant evaluation of the likelihood that a listing exists at your property.  The purpose of this article is not to cover the mathematics behind the score but rather to cover the general types of data (and related questions) that Talos attempts to answer.

The exact algorithms are not published, however, the main types of data reviewed are discussed below.  

Talos Data Types.  Note that each data type is not weighted equally and is displayed here in alphabetical order

1. Distance.  How far from your property boundary is this listing?  Note that most STR sites obscure the exact listing location.
2. Host Images. Are any host images available via a public query?  If so, do they match anyone on the current rent roll?
3. Host Name.  Does the host name match any combination of name/nickname on the rent roll?  Does this answer agree or disagree with the host image result?
4. Listing Description.  Does the description match any parts of the name of the property or other optional property keywords?
5. Listing Images. Do any of the images from the listing match any previously validated listings or property-supplied images?
6. Listing Type.  Is the listing type one of the listing types expected at the property?

How is Talos Used?

Currently, Talos is used in the following ways:

1. To provide a guidance score on a per-listing basis.  Rather than sorting by distance or other simple metrics, most data on your dashboard is sorted by the Talos score.  The higher the score, the more likely it is a listing at your property.
2. To sort out likely and unlikely listings at your property/portfolio.  Each property has an "ignore" and "watch" threshold, which correspond to the ignore and watch thresholds on your dashboard.  Any listing with a Talos score below the ignore threshold will automatically be ignored (but stored for reference).  Any score above the watch threshold will be watched, screen-captured, and reported to you on a daily basis.
3. To validate all listings.  100% of listings gathered for your property will be validated by the Talos system.  Depending on your Property Guard level you may also have your listings confirmed by one of our staff.