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Post by High Priestess on May 5, 2016 14:23:54 GMT
See the article: blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/04/airbnb-builds-on-apache-spark-work-with-mobile-matching-engine/Home listing service Airbnb Inc., building upon technology investments in data analytics and machine learning tools, launched a new matching engine for its mobile application last month that the company says will deliver more personalized search results. It’s based on obtaining more information from users up front, such as whether their neighborhood preferences skew toward the funky or the more family friendly.
It seems like not such a great idea for Airbnb to try to categorize neighborhoods -- neighborhoods don't fall neatly into boxes, such as hip or family-friendly. SOme are neither. Many are both. What does "family friendy" mean anyway? |
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Post by jamiestrayer on May 11, 2016 3:41:58 GMT
Is anyone seeing traffic to their listing decline? We have tons of reviews and a beautiful property located in our mid-sized city. However, our neighborhood isn't as desirable as the higher wealth, more walkable neighborhoods. We've historically had a high volume of bookings at a rate double of their pricing recommendations. The pictures of the beauty of the home/property and our ratings swayed people despite the location. I am gravely concerned that this new neighborhood focus and algorithm will take eyeballs away from our listing that previously resulted in bookings. (ie people wont see it that actually want to rent it.)
Does anyone else share this concern? What is the buzz in our community on this topic.
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Post by High Priestess on May 11, 2016 3:56:33 GMT
I do not know really what the buzz is yet---- I have not heard enough feedback on this. My understanding is that guests are the ones who decide how to search for a place--= and they have the option of continuing to search in the "old" way or deciding to use the search filters for neighborhoods.
My thinking is that an increase in number of listings would have more effect on your number of inquiries than adding new search options. Most plAces have seen an increase in number of listings.
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Post by High Priestess on May 12, 2016 1:02:59 GMT
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Post by Mabel on May 18, 2016 18:01:09 GMT
Apparently this new matching software, or "matching engine experiment" has resulted in an almost complete dead stop of inquiries for many hosts in my city. Almost to the day of its launch I stopped receiving inquiries and have had not one new booking since, aside from one who specifically searched me out to return a second time. I see this being mentioned by other hosts on the remaining groups pages for my area. I have been communicating with several customer service agents about it over the weeks who have submitted notes to IT explaining the damages to long term hosts such as myself. While I don’t seem to be affected much by the “not less than 2 days bookings” experiment, I do believe that the matching criteria experiment has rendered me reservation-less for now, at the height of the earning season of course. Like all changes Airbnb makes, it was designed to help provide more suitable matches as per guests’ filters. My listing is in a virtually unknown neighborhood that not even most people in my city know about, but that I have over 130 rave reviews for. Guests love it here but now are not able to know about it because of new matching criteria that narrows their options down to only what they know and request. This is my best understanding of the situation and all I can do is hope that some changes in the terrible new matching engine are on the horizon.
Any input is welcome!
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Post by Mabel on May 18, 2016 19:43:36 GMT
"Now more idiot-friendly than ever before!" (except now I'm not even getting the idiots) and for however accurate the "stats" metrics are, no views either, even though my ranking in search appears to be okay now having recovered from the recent "deactivated-for-text-in-photos" disciplinary action. I swear the robots running this company are doing me in.
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Post by trafalgar on May 18, 2016 22:41:41 GMT
I get on average less than three views a day (if the stats can be believed). Several days go by without a single view. It doesn't seem to matter, I still get booked up. I think Andrew is right and the kind of guests you want will be the ones who search you out independently; that's the way I search when I'm looking for a place as a guest.
Incidentally, a huge number of UK hosts are ticking the 'hot tub' amenity. Almost certainly because they think it means 'hot BATHtub' - hardly anyone has a hot tub over here!
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Post by nancesf on May 18, 2016 22:45:08 GMT
As some might have read, I was very concerned about the new "matching" since its launch given how they have described/categorized neighborhoods, as in NOT saying mine has great transit even though most guests cite the great transit access in their reviews. I used to be the very first private room listing in SF, on the first page. For whatever reason (on my PC since I don't have the app yet given my heretofore loyalty to my Windows phone), I'm now on the third page. And, the viewing stats of my listing have dropped dramatically between April and today in May. I don't have lots of inquiries because I'm booked through October. (only take a few reservations per mo). I've had 2 advanced bookings for Dec/Jan and even next May, so I cannot be sure of causes and effects. I personally don't have a down season given my rates and ltd bookings. But I do worry. We shall see.
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Post by High Priestess on May 19, 2016 5:12:20 GMT
I was anxious about the "matching" idea when I first heard it floated, even before Andrew and I, and Nancy and a few other familiar faces were invited to San Francisco to witness the fanfare and hear the trumpets blow and listen to 15 minutes of Brian talking about the great new product. I was anxious because I knew that there was no "problem" to "fix", and Airbnb seems to have a yearning to fix problems that aren't there....which can readily result in real problems!! Most of us hosts knew there was no matching problem. We were getting guests, and guests were finding us. So why mess with it?!! As someone pointed out on that day in the afternoon social hour in SF, maybe it was Andrew -- coming up with ever new software is a Geek thing and Airbnb was founded by Geeks. So when the only tool you have is a book on coding, then everything you encounter looks like it is calling out for new computer code.
Andrew and I and many others have wondered, why all that zeal for coding and software changes, wasn't applied to the Community Center, which was so much more in need of it. Now there is a real problem.
I wish I had some suggestions for those who have been experiencing a drought in inquiries after the start of the matching game. I will say that when I go and search for places, as if I were the guest, I find that I can still use the same way of searching that I have done for years. I use the map a lot in my searches, as well as searching by price point. I am not seeing the new neighborhood search being highlighted, unless I do a search with mobile phone. On PC it is just one of the search filter options. And unless someone knows what neighborhood they want, I would think they wouldn't use it.
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Post by Mabel on May 19, 2016 14:53:01 GMT
Thank you Deborah, I think the cell phone app thing may be key here. It is different in its functions than the computer version, and I think the vast majority of people searching world wide are doing it more on their cell phones. I've had convos with customer service about this, as well as the peculiar difference in what "stats" show in terms of number of views on the computer, as opposed to "performance" which is the phone app's term for number of views. The app's "performance" continually shows at least three or four times more views. I asked if that is supposed to reflect the views done from cell phones specifically, but of course, I was asking customer service this question so the answer was unknown aside from saying "it's not supposed to do that."...whatever that meant. So ok I won't pay attention to "performance" numbers. I also wanted to note that after doing many many searches from all different browsers, locations even friends accounts, there seems to be huge differences in what shows up in terms of not only search ranking but my displayed pricing. Safari had me priced at $45 a night while Chrome and the app displayed the correct rate. Customer service was conducting searches at the same time as me, using their "blind searching" which is using browsers completely outside of the company, and getting very different results than I. I can't figure it out, neither can they. I'll let you know if I learn anything else on this matter.
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Post by High Priestess on May 19, 2016 15:24:10 GMT
Yes, at the SF event where they unrolled this new matching software, I spoke to an Airbnb employee who said that Airbnb wanted to emphasize the mobile app as they feel more people are using the mobile app to do everything now. So the matching software seems to be weighted towards app use. I haven't experimented with that very much since I am more an old school type who prefers to use the PC for everything rather than my phone. I find it hard to believe that a majority of people would prefer to do something on a 3 inch screen when instead they could do it on a 12, 16 or 20 inch screen and type with an actual keyboard. But then I'm not of the millennial generation so there are some things I just don't "Get" -- one of which is the need to have my phone surgically attached to my body....
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