Review order- It’s annoying and is Airbnb imposing a form of racial/cultural profiling?

[Leanne99]

Hi Everyone,

Non-chronological review order queries have popped up before but still seem to be a key part of the way Airbnb presents listings.  I really don’t like the way they sort, based on language and assumed country of residence and  I would like the option for my reviews to appear in chronological order. 

It does not make sense to me that Airbnb automatically reorganises them based on the details in the guests profile. This means reviews end up out of order and I believe, not as informative for my guests.

For example, I recently hosted Jessica, an Australian resident who left a nice review in English however her review only shows up on my listing way down the list in amongst other reviews dating back to 2018.

I assume at some point she wasn’t living in Australia and this is apparent to Airbnb via her account but her review is in English and she lives in Australia so why isn’t it at the top of my list?

By choosing to reorder the reviews, Airbnb is also imposing assumptions about who guests are and where they are from seemingly based on the language and location identified in their profile. This makes no sense as people are very mobile (outside of COVID) and is an artificial and I believe unnecessary way of categorising guests. In my opinion it borders on racial/ cultural profiling to assume that prospective guests aren’t interested in seeing a range of reviews from a range of people.

I am also a guest in Airbnb and in that capacity, I am interested in checking all recent reviews of a property I’m considering booking I’m highly unlikely to scroll far down the list to see recent reviews out of order.

It makes me curious if there are big gaps in reviews - until I remember about the non-chronological ordering.

I also don’t mind the language (can get translation) or where the reviewer usually lives when I’m considering their review. I’d rather just see the pattern of reviews for a host and property.

I’m wondering what does the community think?

Cheers,

Leanne

[Colleen253]

All that matters is what the most recent reviews have to say. They represent what is happening with the host and listing currently. Reviews should only ever be in chronological order. How does it help anyone to know what things were like a year or more ago? Everything and everyone changes and evolves.

But as with most issues, Airbnb will continue to ignore common sense feedback and reviews will continue to be a mess.

[Anonymous]

@Leanne99   The order in which the reviews appear to the user depends on which country domain they are browsing from.  This is probably based on the assumption that people want to see reviews in their native language rather than awkwardly auto-translated ones, but it gets a little weird when you have the same thing extrapolated into multiple domains with the same language (.com / .co.uk / .com.au / .ca) or into countries with multiple primary languages (.be / .lk  / .ch / .lu) .

I agree that chronological order should be the default. The fact is, a review from 5 years ago is a far less accurate depiction of your home's present state than one from yesterday, even if it's not in your native tongue. Now that some Airbnb's have been around for a decade or more, the system should grow into the fact that listings evolve over time - maybe old problems are long since fixed or once brand-new features have fallen into disrepair.

In most sites that aggregate reviews (i.e. Google, TripAdvisor) the viewer can choose how the reviews are sorted  (i.e. Most Recent, English Only, Highest/Lowest First). That last one would be unpopular with hosts - nobody wants a nasty old retaliatory review to rise from the dead - but on the balance of things I think the way reviews are displayed should be determined by the person who is reading them. The goal should be that everyone has the best tools to make an educated decision, right?

[Sarah977]

@Leanne99  I wouldn't call it racial or cultural profiling- it's just that for some misguided reason Airbnb thinks guests prefer to see reviews written by guests from their own region first. 

I agree that they should be chronological.

A two year old review that mentions that the mattress was uncomfortable is totally irrelevant if the host bought a new mattress right after that.

But you aren't quite clear on the order the guest sees them in. It's based on the IP address, not where the viewer says they are from in their profile.

If I look at a listing while I am in Mexico, the reviews from Mexican guests appear first. If I look at that same listing while I am in Canada, I'll see the reviews from Canadians in English or French first. The site reads the IP address you are searching from.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

I also agree that they should be chronological.

@Sarah977  if reviews are sorted by IP address then it makes even less sense. Guests are traveling around the world and book accommodation on the way. So if I am in China at the moment and want to book for tonight I have to scroll through 100 Chinese reviews first to finally find some written in English that I can actually understand,

In the beginning, all reviews were in chronological order and it worked well. Then, someone at Airbnb decided it would be better to sort it by location. Why? God knows. This is just one more example of when Airbnb decided to fix something that doesn't need fixing and to ignore things that do need to be changed.

[Anonymous]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 @Sarah977  This has not my experience browsing from an IP address in Germany, nor with switching to a foreign IP address via VPN.  But that's based on the desktop version - I don't know what results you get on the app.

[Alon1]

@Leanne99 @Anonymous @Branka-and-Silvia0 @Colleen253 

Reviews are listed 2 ways. The one that no one has mentioned so far is under Host profile, and that is chronological.

[Sarah977]

@Alon1  That's true. But I imagine that most guests read the reviews from the listing page, rather than going to the host's profile.

[Kevin129]

I agree that the default should be chronological order with most recent first - that's what you expect I think when you look at reviews. As a consumer it's what I prefer for the reasons given by others e.g. you want recent evidence of a product.

It's unclear to me why I should prefer the review of another Brit over someone from another country. Are the things we look for in a room that different? 

I've noticed that other sites have also implemented non-transparent ordering algorithms e.g. Amazon but at least you can switch these to "newest first" as a consumer. It would be an improvement if AirBnb provided this option. It would also alert potential guests to the fact that the reviews are not in date order. 

At the very least they could state that the reviews are not in date order so that a user knows that they may have to scroll through pages and pages to find recent review. 

I opened one of my listings on my iphone and found pages of reviews from 2015 before one from Dec 2021. 

There are other aspects of the platform that are very frustrating. Most of my guests stay for several months or longer. AirBnb has recently added a "long-stay" tag to reviews but hasn't backdated this tag to previous stays so reviews that were many months long in the past cannot be distinguished from a single night. 

I have to ask guests to add their length of stay into their review because AirBnb does not show this. Otherwise a 9 month stay can't be distinguished from a 28 day stay. 

I have raised these types of issues with their customer service but the service agent cannot actually interact with anyone in the development team expect by leaving a comment and they don't get any feedback to these comments. 

[Sandra4976]

I had a recent gleaming review and although it registered in a number I could not find it. Abnb provided a screen shot that showed it as my most recent review on top. All 3 of the abnb customer helpers where in different countries to the Uk. Upon further investigation I went through all my reviews and found the most recent at the bottom of 53 reviews! Friends in the uk also checked as potential guests and also found the most recent review at the bottom. Abnb said they cannot do anything about this as the system generates the reviews. It makes no sense. What potential guests want to see are the most recent reviews that give a more accurate picture of what they are booking. They are not interested in what part of the world someone comes from first. Abnb need to sort this out!

[Quincy-and-Quinn0]

Totally agree that it doesn’t make sense the reviews aren’t displayed in time order. It should be changed to put most recent reviews to the top