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After a spell of regular bookings and communication, everything has gone quiet. I’ve checked the search and our property doesn’t appear to be coming up at all when I search our local town (Poynton, Cheshire UK). Our area is fairly small and if I search with no filters, I get 28 listings. Some of these are up to an hour’s drive away and yet mine and a neighbour’s (who are in the town) are not listed at all. If I apply filters (2 bedrooms and entire home), then I get 6 properties, none of which are mine.
I’ve contacfed AirBnb and had the canned response that they can’t tell me how algorithms are worked out, but it really doesn’t make sense not to list properties that are actually in the very town being searched. The only way I can find my property is via the actual map. (This is our listing: www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/22649099)
Ah! You’re in Poynton – that’s the problem! Been in that area, on the Maccelsfield Canal it’s lovely. I’ve even been to Cheadle Hulme (my last name is Hulme) and to Castleton in the Peak District!!
It sounds as if you just listed in January 2018. I could be that “the honeymoon is over” and your ‘new listing’ boost has gone away. None of us like the idea that Air is listing properties sometimes many miles away but not ours.
There are several discussions here about “disappearing listings” and a major email from Air a couple months back explaining all the things that go into listing order. I know it’s not much help.
Now that I have your listing ID, let me see what combination of filters are needed to actually find it…
Quick update. When I enter Poynton in the “Go To” box I get two choices – “Poynton Cheshire” and “Poynton UK”. If I use “Poynton Cheshire” your listing does not appear as one of the 28 listings for that designation. If I use “Poynton UK”, you show up about half way down the first page out of 299 listings. The area maps for those two searches are radically different as well.
So whether you’re seen or not depends on which of the two designations a searcher uses.
Thanks Ken. I did expect the ‘honeymoon’ to finish, I didn’t expect to drop out entirely.
We’ve found the listing by doing a search for specific dates and a few other filters, but not if we do a search just to see what’s available. It just doesn’t make sense to show homes 45 mins away and overlooking those in the same town… but then when does logic come into these things?
Thanks for your swift reply, I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or a pain in the backside to hear that it’s an issue affecting a number of hosts.
Have you read the information on the Airbnb Help Centre to help you understand how Airbnb ranks properties on their listing.
Using Instantboook, having lots of immediate availability, five star ratings etc all help boost how you rank. Those listings geographically further away may meet all these criteria.
As has already been mentioned you had an artificial boost as a new listing and now you are back down to earth with a bump and also February is a low season in most places in the UK.
As you got more bookings and more reviews I am sure things will pick up.
I have had a quick look at your listing. It looks lovely. Can I suggest you get a professional photographer (half day shoot won’t cost too much and can be claimed as a business expense) to get some decent photos of your lovely place.
And add in some photos of local amenities such as the pub that one of the reviews mention is a five minutes walk.
Put some more colour in your description about the sort of people your place would suit. Say you are a five minute walk from a pub, your description says you need to drive to the village. Say how far it is from Manchester Airport.
Talk about local attractions.
You have some lovely reviews and I am sure you will soon get more.
Don’t forget to advertise through other listing companies to maximise occupancy rates.
Many thanks for the tips. I’ve actually got a photographer friend coming up this weekend to stay, fully armed with her wide angled lenses.
I’ll definitely follow the other advice too, thanks again.
Not really, and you’ve been given some cracking tips here already. I’d simply add that once you have your professional photos, you could quote some of your lovely reviews just below them, as we did. Let me know if you want to know how to do so; I’d need to ask my in-house tech boffin for instructions!
Ken’s insights are interesting on the search front. It might be worth speaking to Air again and pointing this out. It took us ages to get them to list us in Guston, not Dover, although we still appear in a Dover search.
We’ve had a dearth of bookings down here in Kent over the winter, with my newbie boost expiring at the beginning of October to make matters worse. However, my phone/gadgets haven’t stopped pinging for the last week, to the extent that I’ve remembered to leave them all under a cushion in the sitting room overnight, and I now have several confirmed bookings going forward. So chin up! People are planning holidays/breaks again.
I tried doing a number of searches and I couldn’t find it either…until I looked back at your listing and saw that you were mostly booked until mid April! You also have bookings in the summer and August is almost filled.
I see that 154 people have seen your listing this week so it is showing up in search. So everything is fine.
If where you appear in search is worrisome to you, subscribe to a service (smartbnb is the one I use) that will email you a report each day telling you your rank with some set parameters.
So then I did a search for 4 people 19-22 April and your listing came up second. To make sure you stay up in the rankings you should read the information on this forum about what goes into search rank. The busier you are the busier you will be. Make sure you look at your listing each day, maybe adjust the wording or price (btw, your price and your cleaning fee seems low to me but I don’t know your market).
I’ve found that bookings sometimes come in bunches. I’ve been very busy since November in general and specifically in the last week I had one or two bookings every day. Now I haven’t had one in two days and the next three weekends aren’t booked yet. But I bet they will be. All the lower priced places will book up first and then the last minute people will book may place.
Wow, thanks everyone!
Great advice and a lot of reassurance! Bookings have been coming in clusters, all quiet for a week or so and then 3 at once, I hope this continues now our honeymoon is over. I’ll do the amends suggested and I’ve been very diligent at checking / updating my calendar daily and making constant updates to our listing to make sure it’s seen as active and responsive.
@Joan, yes please to the help on adding quotes to the pictures, a great idea!
Blockquote It took us ages to get them to list us in Guston, not Dover, although we still appear in a Dover search.
Blockquote
How did you manage to get them to change your listing? I’m getting nowhere with them currently even though I’ve pointed out what @Ken has discovered, ie that we come up in a search for Poynton UK but not Poynton, Cheshire.
The map that shows for the second one actually cuts off half of Poynton but includes Manchester (go figure), I’m trying to discuss the logic of this with Customer Support but we seem to have differing views…
To be honest, I can’t remember how we managed to do so but I think we just kept pestering them until they added Guston to the list in the drop-down box. It was muddled as they kept putting us in St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe at first, which was already on the list, but it’s a completely different destination. Someone else joined around about the same time, so that may have helped too.
I haven’t forgotten about the adding text to photos, but Himself was miserable with a) a head cold b) a hangover over the w/e…
I’m in pester mode now and will call if the person I’m emailing doesn’t help - I’ve had quite differing service from different people in my communication with support.
Re the text, do you mean captions? I’ve sussed this bit out and have now added some quotes from my best reviews. It does work well, thanks for the tip.
This is what Airbnb says: “We look at nearly 100 different factors for every listing in every search and
The exact list of features we consider is confidential…”
I don’t know what your “I read somewhere” source is but the bottom line is no one knows every factor. What I think is well known is that active hosts who are on their listing, keeping it updated, updating their prices and calendar, pictures and wording get a boost.
Let me amend that…someone knows but I don’t think they are telling anyone.
I do know from experience that my ranking dropped a good 20-30 spots when I had about 6 weeks of the summer blocked. It took me about 6 weeks to get my bookings and search rank back up.
Please have a look at our listing/photos that will show you what I mean, but please don’t ask me how he did it! I’m not very tech savvy… Perhaps Chrissie can tell you???
It’s the captions at the bottom of the photos. When you edit your pics, instead of popping in a description use a guest review instead. I think it’s really effective.
Been in that area, on the Maccelsfield Canal it’s lovely. I’ve even been to Cheadle Hulme (my last name is Hulme) and to Castleton in the Peak District!!