Scrolling through my listings yesterday, I found that one of three suddenly gave me the option to add "design highlights" under Listing Details:
My listing description has always read, "Private getaway cottage is a favorite of honeymooners & lovers of modern design." The word "design" appears 20 times in reviews. I use review excerpts as photo captions and the word "design" appears several times there as well.
Clicking through "design highlights" above I was able to add the architect's name, and that now appears under the listing in search under "Design":
However, his name doesn't appear under the listing under an "All Homes" search, and the highlighted photo is different:
One of my three listings is a cabin, so I looked for it under the "Cabins" category in Maine. You may have heard there are a lot of cabins in Maine, so no surprise, I had to scroll forever and finally zoom in on the map to find it. Here's what it looks like under the "Cabins" category:
And here's how it appears under the "All Homes" category:
As with the cottage, different photos, different dates, different prices. Which I don't mind at all! I think it's cool to appear in different ways in different searches, which conceivably means slightly different demographics are seeing these.
Some conclusions?
* Since listing the cottage in 2015, I've marketed it to people who love design. It looks like the machine picked up enough cues from keywords, captions, and possibly photos to move the cottage into the design category.
* Even though all three of my listings were designed by the same architect, I haven't leaned on design in the other two, and was not given the option to add design details to either of them.
* Interestingly, although virtually every single guest at each of the three listings mentions Acadia National Park as part of their trip plans, and the name "Acadia" (usually by itself, without "National Park") appears many times in reviews, none of my listings appear under the "National Park" category.
* I think the machine is going to keep working to refine categories, so I'll spend some time working on keywords, which is also a good way to refine your marketing to the demographic most likely to book.
* I found the search on the app very simple to use. Above the categories, the box says "Where to? Anywhere * Any week * Add guests." I believe this is what's called a "call to action." Tap on the box and put in some info. Narrow things down from there.
Overall I find the whole thing rather interesting. And that brings me to a horrifying thought: Am I, in fact, a 64-year-old millennial?!?