Apartments' ranking algorithm change to be launched tomorrow

Don't be surprised if your apartment will rank different tomorrow.

In our bid to be as transparent as we can here follows the exact break down of ranking factors.

• 30% will depend on our recommendation
• 20% on whether you're listed as Instant Booker
• 30% on bookings, ie how often and for how long for your apartment gets booked. Note that booking logs are erased shortly after check out, so the ranking you earn with bookings is not there forever.
• 10% on reviews, ie how often and how well your apartment gets reviewed by clients
• 10% on interaction with Cities Reference, ie how often and how deeply you interact with our website.

Please note: In August 2012 we added the Priority Owner status as a ranking factor affecting an additional 10% on total.

Got more questions? Find more answers in Cities Reference help page or through Cities Reference contact page.

Best tip to gather rankings fast? Get bookings. How do you get bookings even with a low rank? Competitive rent price, many travelers sort by price...

Image credit: socialmarketing.oneupweb.com

Happy New Year!

Wanted to check back with our followers that dig into our analytics. New year comes with plenty of nice surprises. Let's check it out

Cities covered are now 33! We're looking at a growth of 267% compared to the same day last year.
Apartments listed are now 3,651! We're looking at a growth of 346% year on year. Nice!
Instant apartments are 816, the ratio is 22.4% of total, we'd like to grow this dimension fast.

Alexa:
Roman Reference kind of stable at 58,000 (growing 11.5% year on year)
Cities Reference losing some ground at 63,000
Paris Reference losing ground at 118,000
the rest are way lower

Facebook
Cities Reference Facebook page has 1,331 fans/841 talking about it (more than doubled in the past couple of months!)
Roman Reference Facebook fan page is at 438 fans and 4 talking about it

Analytics Rome

• Rome grew unique traffic by 5% and 
• number of bookings by 18%, although the 
• goal value is broadly stable due to the fact that commissions have gone down dramatically under pressure from the competition
• conversion rate with the new website and lower commissions and apartments inventory up 55% grew a meagre 7% in Rome. It must be the crisis, or maybe it's just me and expecting more than 7% growth on conversion rate is not realistic despite all the investments made to that purpose.
• Weight of adwords on overall site traffic grew from 13.6% to 18.2 (grew 50% nominally year on year). Adwords weight of revenue and transactions on overall site results in the past year has been 24%, last year was just 14.6%. Nominal growth of adwords generated goals has been 73.5% year on year spreading up nicely when compared to the 50% growth on traffic. Adwords conversion rate grew 18% year on year and has been 32% higher than site average. CTR has improved 47%; CPC is up 26% (to 1.9 from 1.5), Impressions are equal. Adwords investment grew 79% year on year, it's ROI grew 490% (from 115% to 680%) Margin grew 63% (from 53% to 87%). Overall spreads on site average are looking good, year on year improvement on performance of adwords is looking nice pretty much on all dimensions especially considering the deepening of the global crisis and the increased competition.

 Analytics Paris

• Unique visitors grew 2.5%
• number of bookings grew 33% though with goal value going down 20% because of lowering commissions
• conversion rate is up 15.5%
• Adwords on Paris is a losing game our inventory is not competitive and competition looks too hard. Stable at ca 5% of total traffic. Conversion rate although growing 75% from .49 to .86 is still in negative ROI and below site average (!).

Apartments:
Rome apartments are 815. Growth year on year is 55%, which is quite remarkable. We launched the new website with improved apartments listing wizard last March, since between 2010 and 2011 the growth had only been 15%, it is fair to assume that the new wizard makes listing a whole lot easier and allows a 5X growth in apartment listing inventory for a mature website.
Instant Ratio is 42.3%. Growing! We can't wait to hit that benchmark of 50% which we're heading to, certainly before the end of this year we hope.
Visitors per apartment/month: is 15, lower than usual in low season. It's 35 on Instant Booking apartments.
Conversion rate is 1.38% on e-commerce and 82.7% on online bookings slightly better than the last update.
Booking requests went below the psychological benchmark of 600 briefly last month and they're now back up to 645, still worryingly low. Crisis is hitting all of us after all. It must be remarked that spikes in growth of apartments are usually coming together with lows in bookings. This period is no exception.
Apartment reviews 2,421




Paris apartments are 347. Growth year on year is 120%

Export (or import) your calendar with Cities Reference

Did you know you could export your calendar with Cities Reference? It takes the time of a copy and paste and it allows you to update just one calendar for all the websites you're using. This is going to make your life a whole lot easier and allow you to activate your instant booking with us which multiplies 10x your bookings.

Are you using the 'Map View'?

Are you using the map view when searching your rental apartment? This is a great tool that will give you total control of the area where you want to be located. It will show you only the apartments available in your time frame and its cost. You can seamlessly go from map to apartment description and booking.

Check it out here: explore the apartments and click on 'Show on map'.

Update completion

We weren't able to complete the last update.

What changed for the three sites already listed is

Alexa:
Cities Reference up 8.2% with 61,000
Roman Reference up 7% with 58,000

Apartments
Rome Apartments: up 2.5% in 2 weeks to 770 apartments. 60% growth annualized. Waste Ratio is 9.9%. Availability Ratio is 15% in low season counting only Instant Bookings (29% factoring in non instant)
Paris Apartments: stable at 343 apartments (!). Waste Ratio is 9.9%. Availability Ratio is 3.9% (48% factoring in non instant)
New York Apartments: stable at 149 apartments.  Waste ratio is 5.4% and Availability ratio is 0.7% (42% factoring in non instant)

Spotlight is needed still on
London Reference
Analytics: Our 6th site on traffic, up two positions, just below Copenhagen Reference by a few units. Time on Site is well above average at 67% of RomanReference's speed or 32.8% lower. Same goes for the Bounce, better than Paris and better than average.
London Apartments: It is our 3rd site with 151 apartments (421% rate of growth!) and an instant ratio of 61%! Waste ratio is 8.7%
Booking/Instant Ratio is 12.5%. Great numbers well worth further investment.
Availability Ratio:

Amsterdam Reference
Amsterdam apartments: 142 apartments our 5th site
Instant Ratio is 0. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Ratio is 19% (but no Instants so actually 0)

Barcelona Reference
Barcelona apartments: 82. Our 7th site. Rank 1
Instant Ratio is 50%. Waste Ratio is 1%. Availability Ratio is 2.4% (or 39% factoring in non instant)

Belgrade Reference
Belgrade apartments: 91. Our 6th site. Rank 1
Instant Ratio: is 5.5%. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Ratio is 1.1% (57% On Request)

Berlin Reference
Berlin apartments: 78 our 8th site. Rank 1. Instant Ratio is 57.7%. Waste is 0. Availability is 7.7% (43% on Request)

Brussels Reference
Brussels apartments: 50 our 11th site. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 96%. Waste is 2%. Availability is 8% (10% On Request)

Copenhagen Reference
Copenhagen apartments: 14. Rank 1. Instant 0. Waste is 21.4%. Availability is 0 (50%)

Krakow Reference
Krakow Apartments 30 apartments. Rank 0
Availability ratio is 16.7% in low season. Waste Ratio is 0. Instant ratio is 100%

Madrid Reference
Madrid Apartments 58. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 64%. Waste ratio is 1.7%. Availability 5,3% (13%).

Prague Reference
Prague Apartments 63. Rank 0. Instant Ratio is 98.4%. Waste Ratio is 0. Availability Rate is 8%.

Growing on

Three months on we feel pressed to update.

City sites are now 18, with just a 6% growth (notably and finally Amsterdam rentals), but the main improvement is on sites like A'dam itself and Dublin now featuring decent numbers of apartments listed. Apartments are now 2,069 keeping the pace shown with the last update and growing 55%. With 751 Instant Booking apartments the ratio is now gone down to 36.3%. Still very reasonable.

Last but not least New York is finally also a .com and not just a .co.uk.

And now a look at the details.

Cities Reference features an Alexa of 66,000 (growing 3% in traffic). On Analytics traffic is stable at 32% of Roman Reference; traffic month on month is down 8%, year on year though - which is what really matters - gains yet more speed at 862% growth!
Time on Site 9,02 and Bounce 36.7% are as usual the best of all. One note here is necessary. Since the overhaul last March/April 2011 the parent site -Cities Reference- has become the venue of mostly owners as opposed to the single city sites which gather mostly travelers. Different behaviors here reflect well our underlying strategy of envisioning owners as partners in business and travelers as clients. No wonder apartment owners show a higher level of stickiness to the site.
Other than that it must be stressed that time on site has been growing a robust 12.5% compared to the last update, while bounce has remained largely stable.
CR Facebook page: with 543 fans, starts getting decent

Roman Reference
Stats: with Alexa of 62,000 (growth 6.5%) is performing at one of its best standards ever. Gathering distance from Cities Reference despite our prediction.
Analytics keeps pace from all the other websites. Growth year on year slows down slightly to +11%. Month on month is down 11%.
Bounce and Time on Site: at respectively 38% and 6.05min are really good for a traveler centric kind of site.
Rome Apartments: with 751 apartments it keeps growing 13% from update to update, it's a 50% growth if annualized, so very robust considering this site can by all means be considered mature at this point.
Visitors Vs Apartments/month: 20.1 so slightly improved, this is the best metrics when looking at traffic. 49 is the ratio for Instants.
Instant Vs On Request: stable at 41%
Conversion: on Ecommerce is 1.57% which is 3.2X compared to the industry average. We'll track growth on this from now on. Conversion on online bookings is 79.7%, lower than average, which is odd for a low season period, this is likely due to October that, being highest season, has received a lot of last minute bookings for On Request apartments. On the other hand November is too slow to make up for it.
Booking requests: 879 in line with the low season tide.
Client Reviews: 2,276 we'll start checking its growth from now on.
RR Facebook Page: 412 fans

Paris Reference
Alexa: 105,000 up 20% and firmly third website
Analytics: Still third website at 12.6% of Roman Reference's and 40.4% of Cities Reference's speed and keeping the 4th site (New York Reference) at 17.7% of its speed, so the traffic measure is comparatively not bad, although the year on year measure stays put in red at -3.9%. Time on site is 42.4% less than RR (not great and worsening) and bounce is 45.7% higher (ouch bad metrics in Paris!!).
Apartments: Still 3rd with an amazing growth rate of 96%! This measure largely makes up for the previous when looking at the future.
Visitors VS Apartments ratio/month: bound to drop dramatically with the recent flow of apartments: 5.3, although it keeps stable for Instant apartments at 53 per apartment. A note here is due. 53 per Instant apartment is higher than Roman Reference therefore worth noticing. Instant apartments in Paris are getting booked out faster than Rome and they are likely what determines the dismal figures for time on site and bounce rate. Working on the Instant figure in Paris becomes the key to success.
Instant VS On Request: Down 50% with just 10.2%, ouch!
Conversion on Bookings: it's 0.87% on ecommerce, still better than industry average but almost just half of Roman Reference. Conversion on online bookings is 62.3%, which is good in general and improved lately despite the bad numbers above, which again comes to demonstrates that this site needs at least double the ratio of Instant Apartments to start delivering.
Bookings are just 7.5% of Roman Reference, so... going down. Still by far our second site in terms of booking requests.

New York Reference: A lot of things have improved in New York. Finally a .com for it, finally the USD as the main currency, finally our team on visit to the Big Apple to promote it for good, a lot more apartments!
Alexa: at 1,035,000 is up 132%.
Analytics: Shows it up one to our 4th position. 2.2% of Roman Reference so slowing a little on that measure. Time on site is 41% lower than Roman Reference, so improving consistently and getting to be slightly better even of Paris. Bounce is 13% worse than RR, so again a lot of improvement and a lot better than Paris Reference.
Apartments: It's now our third on apartments, up 5 position. With 149 apartments it grew 224% after our trip to New York.
Visitors VS Apartments: It's 2.2 which doesn't surprise with a sudden growth of 224% on apartments. The real measure to look at is towards Instant Booking apartments where it has 36.5 visitors per apartment which is rather good actually.
Instant Ratio is 6%, so 3X better than the last update, clearly the visit to NY brought reaped some interesting results.
Booking requests: Easily our third site in terms of booking requests with 1.6% of RR and 24.5% of PR. Not bad.
Conversion on booking requests is 7.7%.
Analysis: New York, in spite of recent legislation against vacation rentals, pulls a lot of weight and has a lot of potential.

A benevolent Generalplan Ost for Cities Reference

Two months on a lot has happened, especially East of Europe Warsaw, Krakow, Prague and Belgrade apartments  are now listed, even Apartments in Venice are kind of East after all.) Sites listing vacation rentals (that is not blogs) are 17 therefore a whopping 70% up compared to our last post. Apartments are 1,333 compared to just 860 (55% growth). Most importantly the ratio Instant Vs On Request apartments has jumped to 46.2%! A productive couple of months indeed!

This is low season for monthly bookings (just over a 1000 they went down ca 30%) and it may be what helps apartments' growth since single owners get more spare time and an urge to fill the gaps

Let's give a look at the details

Cities Reference confirms its parent site status with 68,000 alexa (basically stable), disk usage is 4 times lower than Roman Reference still yet 6 times higher than the third ranking website (Paris). Analytics ranks it our second site in traffic twice more traffic than Paris Reference and stable at 33% of Roman Reference speed. Traffic is unsurprisingly down (7%) month on month (this is low season) but it's gaining speed on a yearly basis at 627% growth.
Time on Site (8:07) and Bounce Rate (36:38) are by far the best of all

Roman Reference
Alexa 66,000 is down 10% in two months (which comes with low season) and meeting with Cities Reference in the middle, this was bound to happen and likely Cities Reference should pass Roman Reference soon since it's become the general hub the previous used to be.
Disk Usage is still the highest with 25,000MB and 41,000MB of traffic
Analytics still the highest (66% more traffic than the 2nd best - 10 bookings everyone made by the second best). 14% growth in traffic year on year.
Apartments: With 667 apartments it has grown 13%(!!) compared to two months ago and almost 45% since May 2010. That seems to show a hell of an acceleration since its annualized rate, if it kept the pace is 156% almost 300% faster than last year.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 19.5. Considering only Instant it's 48.
Instant Vs On Request: Also the Instant ratio is improving sensibly with 41% compared to 38% only two months ago.
Conversion: on bookings is also improving to 83% of online bookings converted Vs 81+ two months ago
Booking requests: 887/Month, the slow down is pretty normal in low season, although 26% is double the slump in traffic.

Paris Reference
Alexa 127,000 is down 13.5% with low season and still firmly our third website.
Analytics:  our third site on traffic still faring at 16% of Roman Reference's speed, time on site is 40% lower than Roman Reference and bounce 22% higher so there is improvement in all measures. Year on year traffic is also improving to just 3.8% slower than last year.
Apartments: It's still our third website on apartments although the competition seems to be gaining speed. With 175 apartments it grew 9.4% in two months, so half the speed of Roman Reference and nothing compared to the speed of the developing websites below.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 11.5. Considering only Instant it's 54.

Instant Vs On Request: ratio has improved a lot to 20%
Conversion on bookings has improved sensibly to 57.3%
Bookings are still just below 10% of RR's
Altogether a reasonably good picture compared to two months ago and taking the season into account.

Berlin Reference:

Alexa: 2,258,000 down 10% with the low season

Analytics: It's our 6th site on traffic (1.8% of RR, slowly gaining field) so it's up one position, time on site is 61.9% lower than Roman Reference (so improving), bounce is 33% higher (stable).

Apartments: It's our third site for apartments, so up one position. With 77 apartments it grew  140% in two months. Pretty stunning growth

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 3. Considering only Instant it's 5.1.

Instant ratio is 59.7%!! A stunning growth.

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is 50% double last time, as for booking requests is 4th on our site 0.45% of RR this is also improving.

Very good jump ahead with Berlin

Barcelona Reference:

Alexa: with 3,558,000 is 153% down...

Analytics: It's our 7th site on traffic (2 down, 1.48% of RR, so going down), time on site is 56% lower than Roman Reference (improved) and bounce rate 20% higher (improved!). Year on year traffic is up 48.68%, that's a great figure! 

Apartments: It's our 4th site with 71 apartments, so up two positions and up 163% compared to only two months ago. One of the biggest velocity we got.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 3.3. Considering only Instant it's 5.4.

Instant Vs On request ratio has come to a flattering 60%! 

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio are too low to mention, the booking requests are plenty though, by far 3rd site.

Analysis: the fundamentals of Barcelona are now in order we only need to bring in some traffic.

Prague Reference

This is just gone live but it runs real fast. 2,284,000 on Alexa and 62 apartments, mostly Instant. We've got great expectations

Madrid Reference

Alexa: 3,709,000 badly down

Analytics: It's our 10th site for traffic (stable, just .66% of RR, so going down in measure) time on site is 62% lower than RR, bounce is 9% worse than RR. So here there is a big jump in improvement.

Apartments: It's our 6th site for apartments (up 1 position), with 48 apartments it grew 243% in two months, the fastest website growth we got.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 2.3. Considering only Instant it's 3.

Instant ratio is 73%!! Our best on older websites

Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is Nil.

Brussels Reference

This is just gone live but it runs pretty fast. 3,193,000 on Alexa and 47 apartments, all Instant.

New York Reference:

Alexa: at 2,397,000 is stable

Analytics: It's our 5th site on traffic (up 1! 2.66% of RR so improving quite a bit), time on site is 59.2% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 20% higher. Kind of stable.

Apartments: It's our 8th site for apartments, down 5 positions. Hardly surprising since we're growing in the Euro area mainly.  With 46 apartments it grew a meagre 5% in two months.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 10. Very good rate for a developing one.

Instant ratio is 2.1% and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is too low to mention, as for booking requests though it's our 5th site.

Analysis: New York has slowed down, this is hardly surprising since we are concentrating on Europe right now

London Reference

Alexa: with 1,879,000 this has been the only site growing in traffic during the slow down.

Analytics: It's our 8th site for traffic (stable, 1.3% of RR), time on site is 27.4% lower than RR, which is great! and bounce rate is 6.1% higher than RR, which is also great!

Apartments: it's our 8th site for apartments with 33 of them, down 3 positions due to the Euro focus of the past couple of months, up 14% in two months on inventory which is not bad.

Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: 4.8.

Instant ratio is Nil and Booking Request/Conversion is 8%, as for booking requests it's 3rd on our site 2.8% of RR which is not bad

We expect London to grow dramatically after the summer once we'll have sorted out our currency problem and concentrated on the non Euro countries

Krakow Reference

This is just gone live but it runs pretty fast. 4,200,000 on Alexa and 32 apartments, all Instants.

Copenhagen Reference:
Alexa: 3,998,000 traffic went tumbling down since we stopped believing in its growth and investing in it.
Analytics: It's still our fifth site on traffic (down 1 position and 2.5% of RR), time on site it's 64% lower than Roman Reference, bounce rate is 17% higher. Traffic year on year is down 28%.
Apartments: It's our 11th site with 13 apartments, precious little growth since six months, 33% year on year.
Visitors Vs Apartments Ratio: is still the best we got: 26! The problem are the deals on sale which just aren't great at this stage.
Instant is 0 and Booking Requests/Conversion ratio is 25%, as for booking requests it's our 6th site

There are 6 more websites, 2 of which brand new, although they're either too slow or too new to mention. Next time!