I’m sorry to revive this thread, but it’s the closest I could get to my problem.
The background - old-school place in Lancaster (one room B&B), 3 years’ listing, 105 guests, average rating 4.97. Superhost since our first adjudication. Regularly and frequently update listing with new photos, new text.
My problem is exactly the same as the OP - if I do a general search for listings in Lancaster with no filters on, 35 listings appear - but not ours. If I do a search with date or other filters on, our listing appears at the top. This is good, but you can see that if a potential guest thinks to themselves “what are the listings in Lancaster like”, with no specifics in mind, then we’re getting no exposure on that general search.
I phoned support today and they were as much use as a chocolate teapot - they kept on wittering on about algorithms. But what algorithm is keeping us out of the general, no-filter search?
Has anyone any ideas?
Cheers, Mac
I speculate that airbnb regularly rotates stock so to speak. So different properties are rotated in and out of view. But as you said, if someone is not just a window shopper but wants to actually stay you show up on top so that could be to your benefit as you only get serious inquiries?
Yes, but the point is that if somebody searches for Lancaster with no filters and sees 35 listings, they’re very likely to book one of those!
Yes. And my point was that I suspect that’s the intention. Airbnb wants to spread the wealth and give more Airbnbs the occasional chance to get a booking. However the savvy guests will see your listing because they won’t be searching with no filters so you still get the best guests.
OK, yes, sorry - I see what you mean - that is a possibility that hadn’t occurred to me.
I don’t know why Airbnb seems to randomly disappear hosts from search who haven’t done anything wrong.
I occasionally search for myself and I don’t show up because I’m not near the “city center.” If I move the map to the east away from center then I show up.
For the kinds of guests I have city center isn’t a benefit. In fact, the city center homes have worse parking (most my guests have a car). Most my guests, and judging from the reviews I read on other hosts listings most El Paso guests, are just driving through or in El Paso for a one night stop of some kind. We aren’t a tourist town and to the extent that we are, the sights aren’t necessarily downtown. So being near city center isn’t important. But that’s how Airbnb prioritizes search world wide.
I believe this benefits me because city center places get booked first. Then as supply shrinks the map expands. All the places going for $19-39 are booked and my place is one of the few left. I get booked (currently running 86% of available days) at my slightly higher prices ($48 average).
Unless you are seeing a dramatic decline in season bookings I wouldn’t give it too much thought.
Sadly yes, we are experiencing a slump in bookings. For the first time ever in three years we’ve no bookings in the next six months - normally we’d have four or five. And we’re only getting about five views of our listing per day. And, as I said, we’re one of the highest rated places in Lancaster. We’re starting to worry…
I’m assuming you do all the usual things that we speculate help: check listing daily, change things even if it’s to raise the price a dollar then lower the next day. Do you have other limits like a two night minimum or no same day bookings?
Yes, I check my listing every day, change it about twice a week. We use IB but with 24 hours notice - no same-day bookings (we’re both over 70 and need a bit of warning of somebody arriving!). No minimum stay. We’re at a loss - it’s Lancaster University winter graduation next week and normally we’re booked ages in advance - but not this year. I’ve no idea what to do.
Possible to share a link so we can see if you are seen?
@southendbootboy I found your listing and then looked at private rooms in Lancaster in a different browser and incognito and your listing comes up on the 1st page for me without any dates added. If I add dates that look to be available, for instance Dec 6-8, you still come up on the first page.
It looks to me that you’ve booked at least half of December and at least half of January and a full week in February. Your calendar ends May 21.
Does this not sound correct to you? If those aren’t booked dates then perhaps a setting has gone awry and those dates are blocked inadvertently?
Also, I went all the way through booking until “confirm and pay” with no trouble. I did it for Nov 26-28 which is the graduation dates. I didn’t book of course but did get this message on that page:
Hopefully some of this is helpful!
JJD - this is really, really useful, thanks. The periods blocked out - late Dec to mid Jan and then end of Feb - are legit because of our own holidays. Delighted to read that the listing comes up - thanks so much for doing this. I don’t know, perhaps it’s all to do with Brexit and this bloody General Election. Many, many thanks for your help - you’re a star and a wonderful person! How did the listing look to you, by the way?
It has repeatedly been reported that blocking dates hurts you in search. I’m glad JJD found that you are still number one but having all those dates blocked is probably going to hurt your booking rate.
If it is of any solace, my views dropped from about 2000 to about 500 and was concerned except when I looked at the comparison chart of the “market median” where I am still about 300-500% more! So, I would say, at least in my area, views overall are down.
As @KKC says, blocked dates are a bit of a no-no with Airbnb. There are a few ways to circumvent the negative effect, mainly by using the pro hosting tools (which everyone can use) by creating a rule set that effectively blocks the dates, but doesn’t actually block’em.
A combination of minimum stays and “allowed check in days” could prob sort you out.
Just shout if you need help.
JF
Tweaking things in my listing daily makes no difference whatsoever to my search ranking. A German host on the Airbnb CC who is extremely savvy and seems to be a math whiz says she and other hosts in Germany have tested it out, and the only things that affect search ranking are using IB, and clicks and bookings. I tend to believe her.
It was terribly charming and I so wish I had time for a vacation 
Thanks JJD, and thanks to everybody for their help. Still no word from ABB Support, by the way - I won’t hold my breath!
I just had the same thing happen to me with my Garden on the Way listing. I was not getting bookings for the month of October. I went to my calendar and lowered all the prices thinking that would help. I also tried searching for my listing and, while my Denim Suite listing cropped up, nothing showed for the Garden. Then I went to my listings page and looked at the Garden as a guest would (if they could find it!) and saw that the whole month of October was shown as booked or unavailable for booking. I immediately called Airbnb. They confirmed that every thing was I said/saw: my Host booking calendar was working, but the online calendar guest saw showed the whole month as blocked.
Can you believe Airbnb was unable to - or unwilling the invest the time to correct - the issue? I hammered on them for the whole month to resolve the matter. I depend on the Garden bookings as my mainstay income. I got messages like this: “our technical team is working on resolving it” yet obvious it has happened to other Hosts going back years. I asked to be compensated for the amount of money I had on average for the month of October (based on the Garden’s Octobers of 2016, 2017, 2018). At first they said, “Unfortunately, Airbnb can not compensate you.” But after pestering them to fix the issue so that I could get bookings for whatever days remained in the month, or else cover my loss of income, they agreed to send me an amount that equaled about one third of what I would have made on average for that month for that space.
I believe what happened to me and my Garden space can happen to any Airbnb Host at any time. I don’t think Airbnb feels this “glitch” of theirs is costing them enough to be worth their time to correct. In my case the month of October represented a loss of $51 to them = peanuts! But the loss of income was a major problem for me. Even the time their Customer Service Rep had to spend responding to my alarmed complaint and pleading for a remedy probably came to less than $51. It does not appear to be cost effective for Airbnb to correct an issue with their system that does not effect their bottom line, even if it results in an economic devastation for a Host.
Beware! Your listing might be the next to “go down the rabbit hole” for a week, a month, whatever!
Thanks for posting. This is another anecdotal data point on something that has been reported her for years. I think it’s on purpose so that everyone gets a few bookings. They really don’t care about any individual host, and they have little incentive to start. They don’t care if you depend on the income because there are also other hosts who depend on the income. Airbnb gets the money either way. And don’t be surprised if it happens to you again.