Review order? Why not chronological order anymore?

While reviews previously always appeared in chronological order, they now seem to appear in a totally random order. I just got an awesome review, and it is hidden within old reviews. Putting reviews out of order makes zero sense to me!

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I thought mine had been scrambled but it was only when I looked. Somebody else viewed my listing and they were actually in order for public view.

They seem to be different for everyone. For example, if you’re from Canada, the reviews from Canadians come first. If you’re French, then the review in French come up first. They’re not fixed.

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My understanding is that reviews are listed in chronological order BY COUNTRY.

First grouping is the country where the ABNB is located (your view) then the next grouping is a different country (and all of the reviews by guests from that country), followed similarly.

It was a shock at first, when I received an email with a glowing review, but then couldn’t find it. It was way at the bottom, but first for that country (France). I assume that when someone in France is viewing my listing that the reviews from French guests pop up first in chronological order.

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Mine have been out of order (not just by country) for a while now, but only on the website, not on the mobile app. I’ve given up trying to understand it.

Thanks for your answers. I still find the review order quite confusing

I’ve just had the same experience. A fantastic review just left but lost amongst older reviews! After reading the above replies I can see it is indeed listing by country not date. However, I did recently read a good tip to include reviews as captions with your photo’s, so going to sit down later and do just that. At least then there’s a chance people will actually read the reviews and we’ve got some control over choosing which ones they see first. Hope this helps.

Seems to have been revised again. As of today the reviews are no longer showing up grouped by Country (of guests). My reviews are now displaying chronologically based on the actual date of the stay.

Anybody else notice this change? Not a terribly important issue, but just questioning if it is a temporary “glitch” or a new 2020 intentional design revamp.

I have noticed that it consistently changes. For me, it has always been that sometimes reviews are in chronological order and sometimes they are in country order. It seems like something they play with.

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I’ve never notice mine change and it’s chronological order today.

I could easily see testing to see if one works better than another. I’ve often wondered how they determine if someone is “foreign.” I had a guest moving in August 2018 from LA to Houston and hometown listed as being in CA, yet her review is grouped with the foreigners. Part of her review is English and part in Chinese. I’d love to attract more ethnically Chinese guests but there her review is on page 82, unlikely to be seen unless someone searches with a Chinese word that appears in her review.

To clarify, it doesn’t change daily for me, but over the last year-and-a-half, it has switched from chrono to country 4 or 5 times.

It actually says somewhere in the Airbnb stuff that people who speak a language will see the reviews that share the language first before other reviews. So, someone who speaks Chinese will see her review before your others.

I have found patterns from this. Once we got some folks from Denmark, we started getting other folks who spoke Danish (but not all necessarily from Denmark). After our first group of Chinese, we definitely got a lot more Chinese guests. And it proved true for each apartment separately. The apartment with the Danish speakers continues to get Danish speakers but the apartment that has never had Danish speakers doesn’t. Both of the 2-bedroom apartments each get Chinese speakers but not until each one already had had a guest. Actually, the first Chinese speaker in the 2nd 2-bedroom came to me as an inquiry from the 1st 2-bedroom that had already had Chinese speakers.

We have never had any Chinese in our Studio (no kitchen). It is a bit stereo-typing of course (and there are surely exceptions) but I can attest that all of our Chinese have cooked a lot. They use the kitchen more steadily (for nearly every meal) than any of our other guests. So, it’s possible that you don’t necessarily attract them because you don’t have a kitchen in your listing.

Edit to add: I just checked and my reviews are not in chronological order today. All the forrrners are at the bottom. Even the Canadians :woman_shrugging:

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LOL. Could be. And I also get road trippers so not a lot of Chinese flying to the US and then driving across the country coast to coast? The only group I ever had a kitchen problem with was the Italian couple who thought they got a whole house for $40 a night. Even though no kitchen was listed, mentioned or pictured they still protested and gave a 4 star review. Oh well.

Edit to add: I got a 4 star from the Italians even though my friend who I was having over for dinner and I moved to the back patio, I cleaned up the kitchen and then let the Italians use it. They heated their food, sat at my dining table for 2 hours enjoying themselves and taking their time and it still didn’t matter. I see looking at their reviews now that they were just picky people who didn’t understand several of their stays. Because no reviews posted quickly enough there was no way for we hosts to help one another.

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