Okay, so categories are still driving me insane.
Through a lot of searching, I managed to find all three of my listings (which are private rooms in the same house) in the shared homes category. One of them (usually my least popular room because it is the smallest) comes up straight away when I search for my area of London. The other two don't show up unless I zoom in basically above my house.
Then I tried out 'iconic cities' of which London is included. Had to zoom in tighter on my location to see that one listing but the other two could not be found, even when zooming in above my house. So, not sure if they are included, but then why is one room in there and not the others?
Exactly the same thing happens when I search the 'historical homes' category. Only that one listing comes up and the other two are missing. This has nothing to do with availability. One of the other rooms (which used to be much more popular than this one) has earlier availability and, besides, apart from shared homes, I didn't use dates to search the categories.
It would be so much more helpful if there was an easy way to see which categories our listings are in so we didn't have to waste time doing all this detective work. In fact, if Airbnb is determined to stick with this category format, which it seems they are, why not show each category on the individual listing for both host and guests to see? It all seems a bit cloak and dagger to me...