Super Host Priority Listing - is it legit or just platitudes for hosts?

[Stephanie365]

It came up on a Facebook page that a fellow host was frustrated that her listing couldn't be found. She is a super host and yet her in-town listing is buried behind listings from out of town on the search engines.  Her bookings are almost non-existent as a result.

I am experiencing the same situation.  Last week, as I was updating my listing, I went looking for it.  It's on page 9.  I have never gone more than a week without a booking until this month. Now I know why I haven't had anyone here for weeks.

Now, if the 9 pages of listings ahead of me were all Super Hosts, I would not be complaining. We all have to fit in somewhere. But that isn't the case. There are listings for Dive Hotels with no ratings ahead of me. There are people with star ratings so low, they're on the verge of being de-listed. There are people even further away from town, in an entirely DIFFERENT COUNTY than I am appearing ahead of me in the searches. And nearly 1/3 of the people ahead of me are NOT Super Hosts. 

To me, the biggest perk of being a Super-Host is the so called "priority placement" in the search engines we hosts are promised.  But I am not receiving this promised perk and that's a problem.  

However, there is a bigger problem, in my opinion. The deceptive data manipulation through cookies that AirBNB seems to be engaging in to make us THINK we are receiving priority placement.

Just an hour ago, I pulled up my listing on my computer.... without clearing cookies. 
Lo and behold, there I am! Placed prominently on the first page you come to for my area. Top row, on the end. It sure does look like I'm receiving the promised Priority Placement that a Super Host deserves!

But then I decided to try an experiment. I went incognito. And 2 minutes later, here is the same page.... And while most of the same listings are prominently displayed on this lead page, my listing is not.  Furthermore, one cannot help but notice that 3 of the 8 properties listed are NOT SUPER HOSTS, yet they are receiving priority placement!

My listing isn't on page 2.
Or page 3.
Or page 4.
It's at the bottom of Page 5.
Last week, it was at the bottom of page 9.



But AirBNB sure wants me to believe that my listing is receiving priority placement by using cookies to make me believe it is.  "My listing" even showed up as an ad for AirBNB while I was reading an article on line. If I didn't know any better, I would think anyone reading that article would see "My Listing". But alas, it was only for me to see so I would *think* my listing was being given prominent attention.

And that deception by AirBNB pisses me right off.  And quite frankly, I question the legality of this deceptive practice by AirBNB, telling us (in writing!) that we will receive priority placements, when in fact, we are being placed behind people  with 4.5* ratings.

Yep, here's a listing with 4.55* and they're on page 4. Ahead of me, a Super Host with a 4.94* rating.


What say you AirBNB?  Prove me wrong.

[Sarah977]

@Stephanie365 Same here. I get these emails, as I'm sure you do, about how one of the perks of Superhost is priority placement, but that's never been the case. In the fall, my listing was in 89th place out of 127 listings "in your category" (private room with private bath, about $30/night) according to the Porter app I subscribe to. Below other places that don't have Superhost and some of which I know to be quite basic and fairly grotty.

The only thing I see that affects my placement is when I get bookings, then it seems to shoot up, but it's a vicious circle- if your listing is way down the search ranking, and guests don't see it, how are you supposed to get bookings? 

They also put the Puerto Vallarta listings in with the Sayulita listings, when they are an hour's drive apart and if a guest is planning to vacation in one, they aren't going to stay in the other, they are two completely different places.

Another disturbing thing is that a guest told me that she had to search 5 times before my listing came up at all, and that was only when she kept upping the max price. Mine showed up when she had the max price at twice what I charge, so they are obviously trying to get guests to book more expensive properties so they can charge higher service fees.

Piss off deception for sure.

[Susan17]

@Stephanie365 

It's always been the same. Here's a thread I posted on around this time last year, regarding the market in Montreal, where experienced superhosts were struggling to get bookings. When I conducted some test searches, only 18 of the top 50 listings (36%) were superhosts.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Circle/Wow-Hundreds-of-new-ABBs-just-flooded-my-market/m-p/...

Another huge problem at the moment is that Airbnb is engaged in an extremely aggressive global recruitment drive to onboard new hosts ahead of the IPO (up to $800 referral, plus $1000 guaranteed earnings in some regions), in order to give potential investors the illusion of stratospheric month on month growth. The armies of fresh recruits obviously get the newbie boost, so are promoted to the top of searches, pushing longer-term hosts further and further down the rankings (and out of the searches altogether, in the more saturated markets). And the longer you've been a host (or superhost), and the more commercial/professional operators start flooding your market, the closer and closer to the door you're pushed. 

Additionally, a host's location can have quite a lot of bearing on where you appear. For quite some time now, Airbnb has been centering the searches on specific pockets of a city/town that are most lucrative for them (invariably dead city centre), and funnelling the lion's share of the bookings to hosts in those enclaves. Those outside the pale, gets the crumbs from the table.

And a particularly helpful Airbnb employee recently confirmed for me that there is no priority placement for hosts - it's just that by achieving the criteria that lead to superhost, it can lead to more bookings, and therefore (theoretically), higher placement. (At least for the first couple of years, depending on the saturation levels of your market, although from what I'm hearing, that honeymoon period has now been reduced to only about 6 months to a year in many already over-stuffed areas) To be fair though, I have more recently seen Airbnb admit that superhosts don't automatically get premium placement Also, he mentioned that SH status can actually be a hindrance, because if you have it, you don't get other "boosts" in conjunction with it, such as the Instant Book boost, for example. 

And then yes, there are all the neighbouring towns that appear in the searches too, as Airbnb seeks to cast its net wider, and dominate further.

So your issue could be all of the above, none of the above, or some of the above. With all the obfuscation and deception, it's impossible to tell for sure. But I'd be willing to bet that at least a couple of those factors are influencing your positioning right now.

[Ann489]

@Susan17  as always-thank you for your much-valued input!   I have been asking myself the same question as the OP, and your explanation is spot-on.    I also would like to add that I was seriously questioning whether having IB turned on/off would really make any difference at all.  According to Airbnb, having it turned on will boost your ranking.   I found this not to be the case.  After turning it off, I checked my listing ranking on an incognito browser daily and it hadn't budged after a week.  What are your thoughts on that?

[Susan17]

Sorry @Ann489 - just seeing your message now - I don't receive notifications when someone tags me 😞

Honestly, I think it was probably a fluke that your listing didn't plummet in the rankings when you turned off IB.. I've seen and heard of too many instances to the contrary from the experiences of countless other hosts to think that something might have changed. But as with absolutely everything else to do with Airbnb, what affects one host, doesn't necessarily affect another host, and one person's experience can be the polar opposite of the next person's experience. No such thing as uniformity with this company! 

[Betsy13]

@Susan17 Thank you for this explanation.  It completely lines up with my experience as a host for several years. Although it makes zero sense to me that Airbnb would bury their veteran hosts.  It totally feels like they are pushing me "out the door," as you described. Maybe the hosts who have been around a while start to figure out how horribly they treat us and that's why they just keep looking for new blood.  Not a great way to run a business, but it's certainly not a new tactic for them . They've always treated hosts like chattel.  

[Susan17]

@Betsy13 

With an IPO on the horizon, it's imperative that Airbnb should very strong month-on-month growth to shore up their valuation, and attract new investors (hence their current aggressive recruitment drive to onboard new hosts, with bumper referral incentives)

It suits them perfectly fine for veteran hosts to be pushed out - we know too much, have become too jaded with all their deception and underhandedness, and aren't as easy to control and manipulate as starry-eyed newbies. (You can bet your life that those who do leave, are still counted in their numbers though, and they make it so tricky to delete your account, that most hosts will just close down their calendars, rather than deleting)

Besides, they're moving more and more towards a "professionals" only platform - and their infrastructure is literally cracking under the strain of trying to "support" far more system users than it can possibly cope with, so an accelerated churn rate very much works in their favour. 

[Mike-And-Helen0]

If anyone feels like doing a search for "Winkleigh, Devon Stays" I'd be interested to know where we are in the list.

Our listing is called

"Sweet dreams 'til Sunbeams find you".

[Jennifer1421]

@Mike-And-Helen0My original search (incognito window, unfiltered) brought up 4 pages of listings, and yours was not amongst them. I pulled your listing up from your profile on here to check your location on the map, and it turns out that that was the problem.

As @Susan17 mentioned, in the original search, the map area centered further south and west of your location such that your listing didn't show for me at all. When I went back to my incognito search and refocused the map slightly to the north and east, your listing appears as the third one on the first page with no filters. When I entered an available date from there, it came up second.

[Ann489]

@Mike-And-Helen0   did two searches for Winkleigh, Devon.  The first one was done from my current browser, logged into my Airbnb account.  It showed 57 places to stay with yours being the 12th from the top.

Next, I used Chrome incognito.  Again, 57 stays, but this time, yours did not show up until the end of the second page.  Interesting, to say the least!

[Mike-And-Helen0]

@Jennifer1421 thanks so much for taking that trouble.

Could that just be explained by the fact that Winkleigh is our nearest village, and we are in the middle of nowhere north east of there?

[Jennifer1421]

@Mike-And-Helen0Possibly, but the original search map encompassed a large area, that I think included where you are.

I just re-searched to find the place names on the map that you appear nearest to (Ashley andHollacombe), and there you were, listed 4th this time around - when you weren't shown at all the first time!

I remember someone (may have been @Susan17 )mentioning that the algo cycles through listing placements. Maybe that's what happened between the first search and this one? Impossible to know...

[Mike-And-Helen0]

@Jennifer1421 yes Ashley is our closest named thing. 

[Stephanie365]

I have always been an outlier for Fredericksburg. I am actually 15 miles from downtown, but I'm also about 1/2 the price of a downtown suite. My location hasn't stopped me from being booked almost every weekend for 2 1/2 years.  Not being booked during the week isn't unusual for me (except during the summer tourist season), but weekends, I'm almost always booked. The only times I've gone more than 10 days without a booking is when I've shut my calendar down.   

My space has been empty since Dec. 16. No bookings or inquiries for the holidays at all.
I've only had 2 weekend bookings since the end of October.

Can AirBNB legally tell me in writing I'm receiving "priority placement" due to earning my Super Host status and not actually provide that benefit?  Isn't that breach of contract?

[Ute42]

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@Stephanie365 

There is no "priority placement" for superhosts. I have done several researches and superhosts show up anywhere from page 1 to 9 in search results.

The impact of being a superhost on Your positioning in search results is = zero.