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Fellow hosts: You might want to check that your listing is showing up in searches. This might just be specific to Palo Alto, but … first of all, it is very, very strange that I have had no inquiries or bookings for November (although I did have a lot blocked), December (wide open), or January. I did this for three years, then took a break. I know the patterns of bookings here at Stanford. So, I tried a search. I now know that if the search is “Palo Alto, CA” my listing does not show up,. What does show are only Stanford campus listings, five of them, when in reality there are hundreds in Palo Alto,. If I search on Palo Alto, CA, United States, my listing shows up. When I googled “airbnb palo alto” various ways to enter into Airbnb site were returned. I took the most specific one that did not show my listing and seemed to have only searched on Palo Alto.
I have posted in the Airbnb facebook page, I can’t find any way to send an email in to report this problem. I am losing money. Seems a reason for a law suit, except there would be no way to prove that there would’ve been bookings.
Hey Chris,
I can find your listing: Palo Alto, CA, USA. It is No. 57 on result page 4.
The website saves your past searches, enquiry dates and even if you have moved the map. Maybe it has something to do with that. Delete your browser cache and try again.
Thank you Dirk. I finally spoke to Airbnb yesterday. The clue was that Airbnb changed their software sometime in the past to not show hosts their own listings. I don’t know whose bright idea that was; I’m pretty sure they didn’t survey hosts. I’m guessing they did it to accommodate the people who have a LOT of listings, not thinking of any option to “hide my listing” or “include my listing.” I used to do this a lot starting out or when bookings dwindled to see how the prospective guests were seeing my listing. So, then I did as you suggested… I cleared cache and cookies in Chrome (wish there was a way to select just the Airbnb cookies . on Firefox that was possible). I then was able to see my listing. This was on Windows. I haven’t tried clearing on IOS Safari yet. I had tried it so many ways. Looks like no matter the entree to Airbnb, like HipMunk, Air Bnb was knowing it was my listing,. Boggles the mind.
I hope people this to know they can’t see their listing, although maybe I am the only one who didn’t know,.
The problem with this is that it may still prevent guests who have done previous searches from finding or booking with us in the future. How will they know to delete the cache? Chris C I can find my listings when I do a search.
They are manipulating search results. Reps. tried to tell me the same thing. You should not have to clear your cookies in order to view your property. How would Air know if you use the local McDonald’s as the place you connect to wifi? What about guests who share the same wifi with the host? Would Air know if the host is searching vs. a guest or a friend, or anybody else?
They tried to say that because Air recognizes my IP address, that’s the reason I could not see my listing. So then they will offer to do a search in incognito mode…and Voila! - there is your listing - all is good, nothing is wrong. This isn’t true.
I finally was able to have a rep. re-create what I was seeing. If a traveler did not use any filters, my property did not show up at all. If a traveler only filtered for number of guests, my property would not show if the guest count was 1, 2, or 3. If the traveler filtered for only “entire home” and guest count - I did not show if the guest count was 1 or 2.
They will begin the conversation with saying they see what you mean…and by the end of the conversation they will begin to say that they are seeing everything just fine. Then they will tell you that your views under stats show that your listing is visible…so it’s just you who cannot see it.
Have you ever noticed that one day Air will show 25 properties, and then a few minutes later they will show 71? It’s not a glitch. And if the only way to view your property is by clearning cookies…how many guests would also need to clear their cookies in order to see it?
Oh dear. I didn’t know it was that bad. I almost drove myself crazy for a few days trying so many tests. (I was a mainframe software tester.) nothing was consistent. There is no way to introduce variables into a test if you have not proven the constant. I like to clear my IP address from time-to-time, so don’t know how they could depend on the I/P address for anything, and as was said, I could be at Starbucks and the next time at Peet’s. I see that I’m going to have to play with this some more. Do you know iof any other “front-end” apps to Airbnb? For example, my friend told me Hipmunk showed Airbnb. I looked for my listing and found other airbnb’s but not mine. When I tried it again, no Airbnb’s came up even with different dates. Amother interface is from Google search. if I searched without United States, I got certain hits. If I left US off, got other hits. As I said, drove me Cra-zy.
Others here said they had completely disappeared and then Air reset some geocodes or something like that, and it resolved that issue.
But because you and I do show in some searches, leads me to believe it is intentional and there is nothing to fix. They supposedly reset the latitude/longtitude thing and it was supposed to take a few hours to reflect any changes. Nothing was different for me.
I guess if filters aren’t applied, they’d not find me down at 57. I just started doing it again. I guess it takes a while to work my way up. Thanks for checking.
We have been hosting since July, and we normally get several inquiries a week and average about a booking a week. About three weeks ago, we stopped getting anything but as we were fully booked until the beginning of November. In the interim, we tinkered with our pricing and turned on Instant Book.
The booking before our last booking (which departed yesterday) left a glowing review but poor star rating. (Turns out she was confused about the star rating.) We thought that this may have effected our search results.
However, last night my husband (who is a techo) searched for us. Nothing. Not on our Mac, Windows laptop, phones, etc. Different browsers, filters, etc. Nothing.
We called AirBNB who confirmed that our listing wasn’t showing up and that they’d escalate it to a technical person. They said they’d email us first thing this morning but nothing arrived. It turned up in searches about 18 hours later. My husband called them to query why they haven’t emailed us and what went wrong. They tried to fob him off but eventually the CSR admitted that she received a lot of these queries where people’s listing just disappeared. She said there was no rhyme or reason.
We had a booking come through tonight from Saturday for a week.
Oh, I’m so tired of the many “technical issues”.
It is so stressful for us to daily check that our prices haven’t changed, our payment was paid, our listing is showing in searches and so on.
If they hired people over 30, they might get some software problem diagnosis, programming, and customer support expertise. Correction…make that over 50. Thanks for sharing. I feel better that we’re all in this together, but feel bad that we’re all in this mess together. Thank you.
I did not mean it was only age; it’s the experience you get from people who have been doing something a long time. There are people, such as myself, with many, many years in customer support positions that could set up a successful operation, or long-time project name hers who have managed massive projects. The self-important young twits walking around at Airbnb headquarters do not have that kind of expertise. Right from the start, Airbnb decided it wouldn’t use any type of conventional communications channels, only whatever was “hip.”
