I’ve played with looking in my city for upcoming dates to see where my listing shows up in the search. It doesn’t ! or is at the end of the search results.
I think it is because Airbnb is giving a preference to listings that have a flexible cancellation policy (mine doesn’t).
Anyone know about this?
You might be right. I have a flexible cancellation policy and my listing shows up on the first page, three houses down.
The company has said in its blog that they will give preference to hosts that make it easy for guests to a) choose them and b) book with them.
Therefore a host with many great reviews, a good response time, a flexible policy etc. is more likely to appeal to guests. Similarly, hosts who use IB make it easier for guests to book.
1 Like
Are you using the Strict policy?
You don’t have to have the actual “Flexible” policy to benefit from the Cancellation Flexbility Policy. It also includes the “Moderate” policy. So, anything other than “Strict” policy will give you preference and show up in the search for “Cancellation Flexibility” (in this case “flexible” is used in the general sense and not specificaly the Flexible Policy). Personally, I feel the Moderate policy to be fair and reasonable to both guests and hosts. It gives you a full 5 days to re-book which, depending on your market, can be plenty of time.
1 Like
We’ve always heard that you should update your photos regularly, or your verbiage - any sort of update to your listing so that it seems “active” by the host and that will put you closer to the top of the search results.
This is a popular myth. Airbnb has said so on its blog. Anecdotally a lot of hosts thinks it helps though. Although I can’t remember the last time I updated our listings!
The reason people tend to think this is that several years ago, websites relied on ad impressions for their revenue so users were encouraged to make changes often to get those impressions up. 
3 Likes