Critique my listing - Brad, East Austin, Texas

[Brad31]

Hi! I'm hoping the community can critique what I'm doing here and help me get unstuck.

I'm a superhost with two listings. One is a high-volume tiny house in our backyard that is currently showing over 10,000 total first-page search impressions over the past 90 days.

The other is our family home on the same property, which we have rented out for many years now during major events in Austin, like SXSW, Austin City Limits, and F1. Not counting my own searching in private browsing mode, it has 0 total first-page search impressions. I can't figure out what's going wrong here.

Here is the listing: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4293731

And here are some relevant facts:

1. I am a superhost.
2. The price has been competitive for at least the past 7 days (and SXSW, a massive source of airbnb bookings, is starting right about now).
3. We have had instant booking on for the past 3 days.
4. Our cancellation policy was firm but just changed to moderate. Since we live here, the flexible policy doesn't quite work for us.
5. We have 5 days during SXSW open—lowered days ago from ~10 days that were available for more than a month—and ~6 weeks open in June and July.
6. We have 15 reviews and a 4.67 average. We have exclusively had 5 star reviews since 2016 (8 reviews), and our first two reviews make up half of our non-5 star reviews.
7. We used to have two dogs and our guests sometimes dinged us for dog smell (great feedback that our noses can't give us since we were used to it). Both of our dogs have passed in the last 6 years and our house is dogless.
8. We had an Airbnb photographer come years ago, but most of those pictures are gone because they were too out of date. So most images are our own and the option for hiring an Airbnb photographer does not appear in the host's listing page.
9. We have booked this house for SXSW and F1 easily every time we have tried, except in the past year, during which its been much spottier. This year we haven't gotten a SXSW booking at all. Perhaps that's because SXSW hasn't fully recovered after the pandemic or other external factors though.

I understand that it's not the perfect listing—e.g., not a 4.9+ average review, infrequently available, and not a flexible cancellation policy—but that's only been an issue lately. And our imperfect reviews are 7 years old.

Please share any thoughts you have about what's going wrong to result in absolutely zero first-page search results. I'm hoping we can stop hiding from the search results page. 🙂

[Jenny]

Hi @Brad31 

Welcome to the Community Center!

I've updated the title of your post so that it attracts some more attention, as I know our members would be keen to come and critique your listing.

I'm not a host myself, but I think your listing looks wonderful, and I hope that you're able to get some helpful tips and advice.

I'm going to tag @Mike-And-Jane0, @Clara116, @Fred13 and @Debbie210 to see if they can give you some of their wisdom.

Jenny 

[Clara116]

@Jenny thanks for tagging me...I have one thought and suggestion. Maybe it's different over in the UK but for me here the expression critique is sorting for what's wrong....I prefer using feedback as it's all suggestions and feedback or recommendations or ideas and mine are never intended as criticism. Just something I wanted to mention perhaps others take it differently than I do. 

Thanks

Clara

[Brad31]

@Jenny, thank you!

[Fred13 · Accepted solution]

@Brad31  Your offering is nice, just needs a little tightening as to presentation.

1. It is a 3-bedroom house, yet says 7 people can stay. True because of the 5 beds, but let the guests jump to that conclusion. A 3-bedroom house screams 3 couple (6 people) max. Best to let the inquirer ask if more can stay, and this gives you an opportunity to ask questions (about group composition).

2. Photography:

A- First picture should be the nice looking cottage-like exterior photo, this is your signature shot, not the one of the kitchen. They are looking for a place, not a kitchen.

B- Then follow with a few complimentary outdoor features that are relevant to the cottage-like theme. Example: outdoor set, BBQ, or whatever.And then 2/5 of the interior. In the first 5 pictures should be a synopsis of your entire place.

C- One photo of a feature or bedroom will suffice, never repeat the same thing.

D-Drop any photo that doesn't enhance the cottage feeling nor is of the same quality level as your best shot, which is the one of the house from afar.

E-Do not show the neighbor if you can help it (they show in 4 photos if not mistaken). May give a crowded - neighborhood feeling.

F- Remember slices of rooms are sexier than left to right frontal pictures; leaves more to the imagination.

3. Clientele: since you have kids it is a perfect place for a family with kids to stay. Perhaps this is a good clientele to appeal to by using phrases like 'family-firendly', 'well suited for kids', etc. This clientele is no fan of hotels resembling college-dorm hallways, they would welcome an open  place like yours.

4. You include an explanation when the places are available or not (let the calendar 'say' that), and some logistics when one is but not the other; best cross such bridges when get to them. Oftentimes the less said the better.

Can't think of nothing else really. The best of hosting journeys.

[Brad31]

Hi, @Fred13. Thank you for your deep consideration of our listing! I'll take most of your suggestions when I revise the listing sometime soon.

[Brad31]

The question of why we weren't getting in any first-page search results remains a mystery. Curiously, the views started rising on the day I posted:

A few thoughts:

1) The house was booked on Wednesday last week and its only other availability is June/July. It seems strange that our views went *up* after the only near-term availability disappeared and stayed up for a few days. That makes me wonder whether the views are shifted by a few days, assigned to later days than when they occurred. (That's separate from the views for the last few days not being counted yet.)

2) The only change made on the day I posted originally was relaxing our cancellation policy (and maybe rearranging photos), which doesn't seem to explain the huge change in first-page search results. Perhaps the change to instant booking 3 days earlier, along with the several-day shift I wrote about above, explains it.

Ultimately, the Airbnb search ranking algorithm mysteriously decided people should see our listing. Maybe it takes momentum in to account and ranked it higher each day.

Any thoughts on the specific question of search results I had posed?