Chronological order of reviews

Cindy237
Level 5
Johannesburg, South Africa

Chronological order of reviews

PLEASE AIRBNB put the reviews into chronological order.

it is extremely important that guests see the traffic moving through the listing.  If you have 10 international guests in a row, it shows up as if you had no booking for two months, because their reviews are pushed down to page 7, which is unsatisfactory visibility. 

Out of basic respect to the guest who wrote it, and the host who constantly tries to improve their listing, the most recent reviews HAVE to sit on the top of the pile!

thank you

 

 

43 Replies 43


@Letti0 wrote:

@Patricia55  I posted this on another thread this morning regarding the review order. It appears random at first glance, but when I was checking I noticed the pattern it follows. They are chronological for each grouping.  It was marked as the correct answer. 

 

Upon futher investigation I found the reviews from US guests appear first, then your country (whatever it is), then all the others with the exception of those written in another lauguage being placed last.



I just contacted Airbnb once again (3rd time in 4 years) as my reviews are once again out of order. The latest guest reviews are showing on page 7 of 17. They tried to give me an "explanation" that made no sense:

 

The system will automatically shuffle the reviews so the same one isn't shown at the top and they can see a review that was possibly left a few months ago.
Today at 08:28
 
They tried to explain that they have no control over the order which I find totally unacceptable. Who  would it benefit to show old reviews? Guests want to know that you are currently hosting. The previous explanation was that it came up in order of the country of the host and guest which was totally stupid since I am in Canada and the majority of my guests speak English. I think they just come up with any answer that they think we will accept.
 
 
Dixie7
Level 10
Dunsborough, Australia

It appears to me that English is one of the most common languages spoken (or can easily be interpreted) by people booking with Airbnb. Why then do Airbnb insist on putting reviews from another country other than the country the host is from at the end of reviews. I understand that if the review is written in a language other than English, then maybe that should be put at the end of the reviews of hosts who are English speaking as I'm aware that when people who speak a language other than English will see that review first when they're considering booking (I think that's a good idea). It just seems logical to me to keep reviews in chronological order, apart from those, and have a button to click on the listing which will change the language of the reviews (and the listing) from English to whatever language is spoken by the person contemplating booking? Have I made any sense? I bet I haven't made any sense to Airbnb! I am really getting tired of seeing my most recent reviews being shunted to the back of the field. I've had some fabulous reviews from international travellers (all English speaking) stuck in somewhere at the back and I've had to search for them myself, like trying to find a needle in a haystack. What potential guest is going to bother to look at the end of the reviews to make an informed decision? None! And that's no good to me if I want my latest reviews to be a true indication of the progress I've made with improvements to my property. 

Jacqueline12
Level 2
Cork, Ireland

Hi I don,t know if this has now been resoved but noticed my latest review, a really brilliant one was lurking on the secon page of reviews, although only 4 days old!

Phoned head office and they assure me that the order I see is different to what the public see ie its in chronalogical order, is this true?

 

I spoke to them on the phone once about this too. They also assured me that guests see something different. But it is definitely not true. I personally checked from several of my friends devices and what everyone sees is the same as you and I. It’s definitely not in chronological order as it should be.

Hi Kagan,

I complained yet again to Airbnb about the reviews out of order and they called me and for the first time someone explained why we are seeing them out of order. We discovered this when I sent a screen shot of what I see and Airbnb are seeing the reviews in the correct order on their computer. They are using Airbnb.com and I am on Airbnb.ca (Canada). I had previously done what you did and got other people to check my listing thinking it might just be my computer but of course, they were seeing what I was seeing because they are also in Canada. My computer won't allow me to access .com as it automatically converts to .ca

They did explain why we are seeing it out of order

 

* Reviews are sorted on the listing page based in the following order:
1. Reviews in the guest/visitor’s preferred language come first.
2. Reviews from the guest/visitor's country come second.
3. All other reviews come last.
* Within each of those subgroups, reviews are sorted chronologically.

 

This might make sense to Airbnb but not to hosts as my most recent reviews are being buried on page 7 of 18 pages of reviews because they are not from Canada! We have to keep complaining to Airbnb that we want the reviews in chronological order regardless of country or language of the guests since the reason for reviews is for potential guests to see that we are currently hosting and getting positive reviews.

Update

Update on reviews out of order. I received this email from Airbnb and they called me to explain:

Hi Rosemary,

I understand where you're coming from. This feedback is one of those things that we value so much since this feedback comes directly from you who uses our platform.

We currently have an experimental feature in place which allows users to "sort" the reviews to either the "most relevant" or "most recent." By default, it is on the "most relevant" which explains the sorting I've mentioned in my previous email.

As of the moment, only a portion of the accounts have this feature enabled, but we're looking to expand it to 100% of users worldwide after the experimental phase is over. We've rolled out this experiment last January.

I know it has been a long time coming but that may just be the answer we're looking for with regards to the reviews.

Regards,

 

Simeon

 

on reviews out of order. Airbnb called me yesterday and advised that they are

YES!!!!!!!! Good. I hope it happens! Thanks for sharing.

I checked from different devices and places too. Very disappointing...

Alon1
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Reviews remain in chronological order with the title of the listing under Host Profile.

 

So while it's not obvious to Guests who initially only peruse the listing, a Guest interested in a prospective Host's profile will stumble on the chronological order.

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Alon1 

Mate you are correct and this is just another anomoly of the Airbnb system!

In a general search of a listing reviews will not be displayed in chronologiocal order, they will be displayed by relationship to the viewers language as set in their account preferences!

But if the viewer clicks on the hosts profile photo, all reviews will be displayed in chronological order. So Alon, you have nailed it!

 

But Alon, I don't neseccarilly think that is a bad thing. I don't have any ' skeletons in the closet'  here and I am sitting on a 4.9 so, if a great review displays on page 27, I don't really care....there are plenty of good ones at the top for people from my environment to study. More importantly for me, I do get a high percentage of guests from China.....I love them, they are very respectful of the property and make great guests....I am even having one couple return to be married here on the property. Prospective Chinese guests automatically see my Chinese guests reviews first....and for me, that's fine....I don't want them wading through a heap of foriegn (to them) reviews....I want them to get straight to the action, and at the moment that is the way it is! 

Cheers......Rob

Alon1
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Robin,

 

I also get quite a lot of Chinese Guests. I always ask them to leave a bi-lingual review precisely for the reason you state.

 

Unfortunately, and curiously, most of them forget their own lanaguage and just leave one in English.

 

In attempting to fathom this phenomenon, I can best speculate that it's because most of my Chinese guests are Students in the UK.

 

Still, I don't believe it's a major obstacle, because when I inquire what attracted them to my listing(s), they uniformly reply, it's the colourful house full of character. Consequently, I take it it's the photographs which determine their choice rather than reviews by their co-nationals.

 

 

 

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Alon1

I have had some seriously crazy reviews because of the vagueries of Google Translate and I just laugh about them now. My wife Ade and I have been called in the review process....'A pair of old ladies and a puppy'!!

You Alon are in an area that is something of a tourist mecca....I am not, I am just a humble converted garage in the backblocks of nowhere on the other side of the world. People book my listing because of my reviews....and to a lesser extent, my photos. I just accept good reviews whether they be on the front end or the back end of the review section, and month after month I end up fully booked. Sure there are some great ones down on page 28-29 but that's fine, as long as they are genuine and about the experience that's all I am interested in!

 

Cheers.....Rob

Alon1
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Robin,

 

I maybe in 'mecca', but London is swamped with Airbnb. When I started in 2012 there were c. 7,000 listings in London. Now there is well over ten times this amount. The swamp is largely created by 'professional' agents with multiple listings. 

 

Still, what has remained remarkably consistent is twofold:

 

1) Guests are predominantly attracted by photographs, the visual is evidently the first response to a listing.

 

2) 75-80% of my bookings are not from tourists, but from those with reason to be in my area.

So it's the focus during the search that narrows down from several thousands to a few hundred or less.

 

 

 

 

 

I just found out from AirBnB that guest reviews are also sorted by length which, of course, means that any guest who has a problem and writes a negative review will, in most cases, be lengthy and, therefore, will remain at the top of your reviews.  This seems very unfair to hosts who are always trying to improve their listing.  I have had 49 5-star reviews but one 3-Star review and this is the one that always appears at the top because of the length of the review and is affecting my bookings.  AirBnB needs to address this issue.  Reviews should have filters for sort parameters, ie, country, star rating, date but not length of review.  Who has ever written a lengthy 5-star review?

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Alon1
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Dean152 

 

I find it difficult to understand your concern here.

 

It seems the negative review you mention is from this month from Jazel, 5th down on your profile, which is in chronological order. Indeed, all reviews are in chronological order on Host Profile.

 

This current 5th Review on Profile from Jazel shows up 6th on the Listing, at least from my vantage point in the UK. As indicated it might show up differently in other countries.

  The current top review which I can see is from Marie-Josee from  January this year, who in chronological order on your profile is now down thirty-three places! 

 

In any case, with your track record, I wouldn't worry about the odd blip.