Listing Rating FAQs
The Listing Rating feature provides guidelines and recommendations to help you present a listing that's accurate, up-to-date, and as attractive as possible to vacationers. Your Listing Rating is one of the key determinants in our Search sort order. And, as the chart to the right indicates, the higher a listing's Rating, the more inquiries it receives from vacationers. Your Listing Rating is key to maximizing your bookings!
Most of our recommendations are quick, easy, and free to implement. And if your Listing Rating is high, your listing could have an advantage over your competitors'.
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Our goal with the Listing Rating system is to enhance the quality, consistency, and accuracy of rental listings. Providing the best collection of rental listings on the Cape & Islands will lead to positive user experience and a greater likelihood of visitors returning to the WeNeedaVacation site year after year.
Listings that are incomplete or not kept up–to-date, on the other hand, leave vacationers with a poor user experience. If, for example, vacationers repeatedly hear from homeowners that an open week is actually already booked and the calendar was not updated, they are less likely to continue inquiring about not only your home but any others on the WeNeedaVacation platform.
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Only you can see your Listing Rating. What vacationers can see, however, are your Response Time, Response Rate, and Calendar date stamp, all factors that strongly influence your Listing Rating.
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First, you can click "Quick View" on the rating itself to give you at-a-glance access to the issues that are affecting your Rating. From there, or under Manage Listing on the Homeowner Center page, you can go to your Listing Quality Audit to get more details about any areas of your listing that need attention and how you can improve them. If, for example, you see that your calendar is out of date, update it, and you'll see your Rating increase immediately. Responding quickly and to every inquiry also gives you a high Rating.
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The criteria for the Listing Rating are the same ones used in the Listing Quality Audit that we've provided to you for many years. In the Audit, factors such as your inquiry Response Time and Rate, updated calendar, photos, pricing, and guest reviews are most important, followed by the rest of the elements such as Payment Methods, Property Description, etc.
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The search results sort order is based on the quality of the listings. So, if your Listing Rating is low, your listing may appear towards the bottom of the search results.
In addition, a low Rating is an indication of a poor or inadequate listing, which will probably fail to bring you the inquiries and bookings you are looking for. Listings with lower scores are less likely to be highlighted in WeNeedaVacation marketing efforts (social media, blogs, etc.). And listings with small photos, especially a small first photo, are not eligible for our free-of-charge re-marketing campaigns on Facebook and Google.
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Yes, your Response Time/Rate and the quality of your photos are among the leading criteria of your Rating. This is because responding to every inquiry and in a timely fashion is extremely important to vacationers, and because photos provide the most influential visual impact on the viewer. Keeping your calendar's date stamp current is important, too, as vacationers care a lot that a listing's pricing and availability information is accurate and up to date. And guest reviews foster credibility and strongly influence the vacationer’s decision-making process to book your vacation rental.
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The Listing Quality is strictly a critique of your LISTING. Your home can be very simple, modest, and even rustic – but its listing should reach certain standards based on the key criteria of Response Rate/Time, calendar updated, picture quality, and guest reviews.