How we choose, score and verify places
Every place on the map passes the same selection test, is scored with the same published method, and is verified against primary sources before anyone can see it.
Last updated 7 October 2026
Methodology version 2026.2, in effect since 7 October 2026. When the method changes, the version number changes, every score records the version it was calculated with, and earlier scores are kept. Version 2026.2 rebuilt the Hidden Score on signals we can collect the same way for every place, so two editors measuring the same place get the same number.
How places are selected
A place is considered when it meets at least one of these tests:
- It is genuinely little known: few reviews, little promotion, rarely covered in English-language travel writing.
- It is well known, but a specific viewpoint, route, time of day or nearby spot offers something most visitors miss — in that case we describe that specific experience, not the famous place itself.
- It offers an experience similar to a crowded destination with far fewer people.
And it must pass all of these: it is legally and safely accessible to the public; it is beautiful or remarkable judged against the rest of Switzerland, not just its surroundings; and we can verify the practical information from primary sources.
We optimise for quality, not quantity. A short list of places we would send a friend to beats a long list of filler.
What we deliberately leave out
- Places that can only be reached by trespassing, crossing closed areas or ignoring signs.
- Places where more visitors would harm wildlife, fragile vegetation or protected habitats — unless official access exists, in which case we show the region only.
- Private property and places where residents have asked not to be publicised.
- Places whose access depends on information we cannot verify, such as unofficial paths or seasonal conditions nobody publishes.
- Anything we were paid to include. We don't accept paid placements.
The scores
Every score runs from 0 to 100, and higher is always better for you: more hidden, more beautiful, quieter, easier to reach, more unique. Each score is a weighted average of the signals below, each normalised to 0–100. Where a signal is missing we never guess: the score is calculated from the signals we have, re-weighted among themselves, and only if they cover at least 50% of the score's weight. Otherwise the place shows “not enough data yet”. The data coverage percentage shown on each place tells you how complete its scores are.
Hidden Score
How unlikely is a typical visitor to Switzerland to already know about this place?
| Signal | Weight | How it is collected | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online attention | 20% | Wikipedia pageviews over the last 12 months across the English, German, French and Italian articles (Wikimedia pageviews API). No article counts as zero. | Logarithmic: 1,000 or fewer → 100, 150,000 or more → 0 |
| International name recognition | 15% | Number of Wikipedia language editions with an article about the place (Wikidata). Famous Swiss sights have 25–60. | Linear up to 30, inverted |
| Search-result saturation | 12% | Of the top 10 web results for the place's name plus 'Switzerland', how many are travel blogs, listicles or travel magazines. | Linear up to 10, inverted |
| Already on 'hidden gems' lists | 8% | How many of the prominent generic 'hidden gems in Switzerland' articles we reviewed mention it. | Linear up to 5, inverted |
| Tourism-board prominence | 10% | MySwitzerland.com coverage: 0 = not listed, 1 = listed, 2 = own feature page, 3 = campaign or flagship attraction. | Scale 0–3, inverted |
| Commercial tours | 8% | 0 = no tours, 1 = included within broader tours, 2 = dedicated tours exist, 3 = many dedicated tours (GetYourGuide, Viator). | Scale 0–3, inverted |
| Reddit visibility | 5% | Results returned for a site:reddit.com search of the place's name (0–10). | Linear up to 10, inverted |
| Distance from tourist hotspots | 10% | Straight-line km to the nearest heavily visited destination (Interlaken, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Zermatt, Lucerne and similar). | Linear up to 40 |
| Ease of discovery | 5% | 0 = signposted from a main road or station, 3 = practically impossible to find without prior knowledge. | Scale 0–3 |
| Google Maps review count | 7% | Number of reviews on the place's Google Maps listing, when recorded by an editor. | Logarithmic: 0 or fewer → 100, 20,000 or more → 0 |
Beauty Score
How remarkable is the scenery, judged against the rest of Switzerland?
| Signal | Weight | How it is collected | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape distinctiveness | 25% | Editorial rating 1–5, made on site where possible, against a shared reference set of Swiss places. | Scale 1–5 |
| Visual composition | 15% | Editorial rating 1–5: how well the elements (water, relief, light, structures) come together. | Scale 1–5 |
| Natural features | 10% | Count of distinct features present: water, high mountain, glacier, forest, rock formation, meadow. | Linear up to 4 |
| Seasonal attractiveness | 10% | Number of months rated 4 or 5 for attractiveness in the place's seasonality calendar. | Linear up to 8 |
| Photography potential | 15% | Editorial rating 1–5 (the place's photography quality field). | Scale 1–5 |
| Stands out from nearby alternatives | 10% | Editorial rating 1–5 comparing the place with similar places within about 30 km. | Scale 1–5 |
| Editorial judgement | 15% | Overall editorial rating 1–5 by the editor who verified the place. | Scale 1–5 |
Crowd Score
How quiet is it? (Higher means fewer people.)
| Signal | Weight | How it is collected | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tourism infrastructure | 30% | From official descriptions: 1 = nothing, 5 = ticket booths, souvenir shops and tour-bus parking. | Scale 1–5, inverted |
| Online attention (proxy) | 20% | The Hidden Score's pageview signal, used as a proxy for visitor interest until crowds are observed on site. | Logarithmic: 1,000 or fewer → 100, 150,000 or more → 0 |
| Crowds at peak times | 25% | Observed on site: level 1–5 on a fine summer weekend around midday (1 = nobody, 5 = queues). | Scale 1–5, inverted |
| Crowds on weekdays | 10% | Observed on site: level 1–5 on a weekday outside school holidays. | Scale 1–5, inverted |
| Parking pressure | 10% | 0 = always space, 3 = car parks regularly full in season (only with documented evidence). | Scale 0–3, inverted |
| Review velocity | 5% | Google Maps reviews added in the last 12 months, when recorded. | Logarithmic: 0 or fewer → 100, 3,000 or more → 0 |
Accessibility Score
How easy is it to get there and back?
| Signal | Weight | How it is collected | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walking time | 30% | One-way walking minutes from the nearest stop or car park, from route planners checked by an editor. | Linear up to 180, inverted |
| Elevation gain | 15% | Metres of ascent on the way there. | Linear up to 1200, inverted |
| Public transport | 25% | Direct stop, short walk (under 20 min), long walk, seasonal service only, or none. | direct 100, short walk 80, long walk 45, seasonal 35, none 0 |
| Difficulty | 20% | Easy, moderate, demanding or alpine (Swiss hiking scale T1–T3+ equivalents). | easy 100, moderate 65, demanding 30, alpine 5 |
| Months accessible | 10% | Months per year in which the place can normally be reached. | Linear up to 12 |
Uniqueness Score
How different is it from everything else you could see nearby?
| Signal | Weight | How it is collected | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual uniqueness | 50% | Editorial rating 1–5 (the place's visual uniqueness field). | Scale 1–5 |
| Similar places nearby | 30% | Computed: published places of the same type within 25 km. | Linear up to 6, inverted |
| Rarity in Switzerland | 20% | Editorial rating 1–5: how rare this kind of place is in the country. | Scale 1–5 |
The Discovery Score
The overall ranking blends the five scores. It is only calculated when both the Hidden and the Beauty Score exist. Accessibility deliberately carries little weight: a slightly harder-to-reach extraordinary place should outrank an easy but ordinary one. And a place that is obscure but not remarkable should not top the list, so when the Beauty Score is below 60, the blended score is multiplied by 0.9.
- Beauty Score: 30%
- Hidden Score: 28%
- Uniqueness Score: 20%
- Crowd Score: 12%
- Accessibility Score: 10%
Editorial overrides
Sometimes the data misses something an editor saw on site — a view that only works at one hour, or a road closure that changed how busy a place is. An editor can then override a single score, but only with a written reason. The calculated value is stored next to the override, and no score is ever overwritten: each recalculation adds a new entry to the place's score history.
Confidence: how far to trust a score
Every place also has a confidence value from 0 to 100, shown next to its scores. A Hidden Score of 91 with high confidence and a Hidden Score of 91 based on sparse data are not the same thing, and we say which is which. Confidence combines:
- Signal coverage: how much of each score's weight is backed by data (35 points).
- Authoritative sources: official tourism, municipal, transport, government geodata or hiking authorities (25 points).
- Number of sources (10 points).
- Location independently confirmed by swisstopo's official gazetteer (10 points).
- Freshness of the last verification (10 points).
- Whether an editor has been on site (10 points).
The scores are a structured, documented judgement, not a scientific measurement. Some inputs are counts anyone can reproduce (Wikipedia pageviews, language editions, timetable travel times); others are editorial ratings, each recorded with its reasoning.
How information is verified
Every place moves through these stages, and only verified places are published — the database itself refuses to publish anything else:
- Candidate. A lead from an editor, a reader or open data such as OpenStreetMap.
- Researching. We confirm the location and gather primary sources: tourism offices, municipalities, transport operators, swisstopo and other official geodata, hiking authorities.
- Verified. Location, access, costs, seasonal conditions and safety notes are confirmed against at least one primary source, and on site where possible. Each fact keeps a link to its source and the date it was checked.
- Needs update or seasonally closed when something changes.
Community discussions are useful leads, but never the only source for a fact. See our sources policy.
Checked against sources, or visited on site
Each place says how it was verified. “Checked against official sources” means every practical fact was confirmed in primary sources and the location in swisstopo's official gazetteer, but an editor has not yet been there. “Verified on site” means an editor has visited. Our launch set was checked against sources first; on-site visits are scheduled in order of how much each place matters to readers, and facts we could not confirm are shown as unknown rather than guessed.
Automated checks we run for every place
- Identity and location: matched against swissNAMES3D, swisstopo's official database of Swiss geographic names.
- Elevation: read from swisstopo's national height model.
- Protection status: checked against the federal inventories of protected landscapes, moors, floodplains, hunting reserves and wildlife rest zones.
- Public transport: nearest stops and timetable travel times from the main cities, from Swiss open timetable data.
- Name recognition: Wikipedia language editions and pageviews.
- Photography: only images whose licence we have verified (for example Creative Commons on Wikimedia Commons), always credited.
How often places are reviewed
- Every published place at least once every 12 months.
- Seasonal places (mountain roads, alpine lakes, seasonal transport) before each season.
- Immediately when a reader reports a problem, or when an official source announces a change.
The date of the last verification is shown on every place.
How precisely we show locations
Free places can be shown exactly or approximately, depending on the place. Places in the Secret Map are shown within a few kilometres until you unlock them. Fragile and protected places are shown at region level only — for everyone, buyers included — with the official way in and the rules that apply there.
How we use AI
We use AI tools to help with drafting, summarising sources, tagging and suggesting internal links. AI never supplies coordinates, access information, opening times, legal access, costs or safety information. Text drafted with AI help is flagged in our system and is checked against the cited sources before publication. See the editorial policy.