The Core

> never seen AirBnB show up in "information" searches

Ditto. And I think much the same could be said of reddit. I suspect an algo is at play. 

much the same could be said of reddit.

Hmm... that's true, but stranger given that reddit content is more search-friendly.

> a load of research on the properties available, locations, owner, reading the reviews, etc.  Message the owner, wait for response, negotiate a price, wait for a response, book it, revisit closer to travel time to get the details etc.

I suspect that's a good part of it.  Cottage rentals here often involve whole families or multi-family. Large or mega-cottages (some 'cottages' are 20+ bedrooms) are popular.  The number of decision-makers involved, the length of stay, amenities, and other assorted logistical issues would likely mean repeated visits and sharing.  For those short-term AirBNB stays that are replacing hotel stays, the fact that it's privately owned rather than a commercial commodity should make the renter more suspicious that it's being misrepresented or hyped and needs double-checking.

FWIW, when I was in the US summer resort search business the search season kicked off on Thanksgiving. I always assumed it was because families were together and used that opportunity to start planning and sharing summer vacation ideas.

search season kicked off on Thanksgiving. I always assumed it was because families were together

Still true. It's also when the wedding search business kicks off. People go home and announce their engagements

The lack of Airbnb ranking in organics may be biz strategy as much as anything.

Early on they wanted to appear different than hotel booking websites, with more unique inventory.

They lacked the scale to do the direct deals with big players so they needed to rely on individual property owners to create scale.

Eventually they will offer tons of hotel booking options on their site & at that point in time they will make geo-local hotel keyword pages, which will likely rank great on the back of their brand awareness and strong link profile. However it remains to be seen what sort of organic opportunity that will represent as Google keeps eating more of the search result interface for the big money hotel related keywords.

• "This is just a suggestion, Google, but if I search for a hotel by name, maybe its own official website should not be on the fourth page of search results, after 3 pages of structured listings data." - Benedict Evans
• "to appear in Google’s meta-search, businesses must pay a price per click that is often three times as much as for keyword searches. Google also charges a 10% to 15% commission on net revenues from reservations booked through its meta-search." - WSJ
• "Google Revamps Mobile Travel Search Results, Almost Making Web Results Irrelevant" - SearchEngineLand

According to SEMrush Airbnb gets something like 10 million organic search visits a month
https://www.semrush.com/info/airbnb.com
The VAST majority of that is their core brand term, or their core brand term with local modifiers like Airbnb Detroit or such.

On a page-by-page basis SEMrush estimates over half their organic search traffic hits the homepage.
https://www.semrush.com/info/airbnb.com+(by+organic_uniq_urls)

They have a "things to do" section, along with options like "food scene" or "shopping mall" but most likely those pages end up being thin and duplicative relative to whatever Google's local results list directly in the search results page.

People looking for hotels typically search for cityname hotels & similar terms, which creates a fertile longtail set of queries for TripAdvisor to rank on. Airbnb operates in more of an unstructured space. The condos vs spare rooms vs little house in back yard vs etc etc etc query volume isn't really there...and people probably prefer to do a visual search for that stuff on Airbnb vs a text-based search on Google.

The sort of tell for Airbnb rankings will be how well their hotel pages rank when they finally launch them, though maybe by that point in time Google's search results for travel will be so ad heavy & otherwise undifferentiated most people skip Google in the value chain in the same way many product searches start at Amazon.com. When Airbnb offers hotel pages they could also easily add car rental & flight booking options.

The other thing to note about some of the other travel brands is in some case the companies make each destination less differentiated by leveraging the same inventory and technology across site after site after site. What's the difference between going to Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity.com & Orbitz.com? And then Booking.com sort of splits their traffic 3 ways between using Priceline in the US, Booking in Europe & Agoda in Asia.

AFAIK they still don't have any Sabre integration, which makes it a non-starter for most hotels. They have created a "multicalendar" for property managers, but they still don't have anything (to my knowledge) that works with hotels.

The question is whether they will dilute their brand and chase the big money or not.

I don't think they have much of a choice here. If the other platforms are adding inventory which parallels their inventory then they are going to have to branch off in the other direction to sell the narrative of growth which is needed to publicly list their company at a $40 billion valuation or such.

They may want to wait to do it until after the IPO or sort of concurrently with the IPO so they can sell it as the next big growth market while not absorbing the risk of it bombing. A great move for Airbnb would be to acquire TripAdvisor to be able to make a big push into hotels all at once - it is probably the most differentiated of the third party hotel sites due to the early focus on reviews.

Expedia is worth maybe half of what Airbnb will try to IPO for, Ctrip slightly more than half & Booking a bit over double that. There's no way Airbnb sits in their niche without expanding horizontally and maintains their current valuation. Their CEO keeps talking about broadening the market by having guided tours & other travel services. From a branding perspective it would be hard to be seen as a full range service provider which just happens to be missing flights, rental cars & hotels, which are perhaps the three biggest travel related services.