At a high-level, the factors that affect search ranking can be broken down into the following categories: listing quality, trip experience, ease of booking, and guest preferences. As a host, you have control over many of these factors.
Listing quality
The way you list your space and how well you look after your guests impacts where you appear in search compared to other listings.
- Booking appeal: If guests frequently click through to your listing page or try book your space can also positively affect your placement in search. High-quality photos that accurately depict your space can attract interest from guests.
- Reviews: Both the quantity and quality of reviews from past guests can impact your search performance.
Ease of booking
How reliably and easily guests can book your space impacts search results.
- Response rate and response time: How quickly and consistently you respond to guests, the better your listing can do in search.
- Cancellations: If you do cancel on a guest, it can negatively impact where your listing appears in search.
Guest preferences
Search results may vary depending on the person, their preferences, and the specifics of their trip.
- Location relevance: We try to show search results that are most relevant to the guest’s location preferences.
- Social connections: If a traveler has friends in common with a host or went to the same school, we may show that host more prominently to that traveler. In order to benefit from social connections, be sure to connect your Airbnb account to your Facebook account.
- Personalized results: Guest preferences for certain amenities will be taken into account in search.
We understand that new hosts may not have had a chance to get many inquiries and bookings yet, so we also take this into account.
