September 7, 2023
Tripadvisor Popularity Ranking: Key Factors and How to Improve it
Learn more about the Tripadvisor Popularity Ranking and get tips for improving your business’s performance.
September 7, 2023
Learn more about the Tripadvisor Popularity Ranking and get tips for improving your business’s performance.
Here at Tripadvisor, we help hundreds of millions of users search for hospitality businesses just like yours. We want nothing more than to recommend great experiences and connect hospitality business owners with potential customers.
Part of that secret sauce of what makes Tripadvisor great is our popularity ranking and how it is determined. If you’re looking to improve your business’s popularity ranking, keep reading.
Travelers and diners come to Tripadvisor to find hospitality businesses that match their search criteria the best. In an effort to help our users better plan their trips or their dining experiences, we created a popularity ranking that compares hospitality businesses like yours based on their popularity.
So you might be wondering what are the key factors that impact your popularity ranking.
This refers to the number of reviews you have on Tripadvisor. Higher bubble ratings positively impact your Popularity Ranking and our goal is to showcase hospitality businesses with the most four and five bubble reviews. All other things being equal, a business with more 5-bubble ratings will rank higher than one with lower bubble ratings.
Recency refers to the number of new reviews your business gets. While older reviews still count toward your ranking, newer reviews better reflect the current experience of your business. This means reviews — good or bad — that are older will not count as much towards a business’s ranking as a review written more recently. Although older reviews do not have as much weight in the ranking, they are still visible in the Overview section of each listing and in the business’s review history.
The bubble ratings that users provide as part of their reviews are used to rank the quality of the experience at each business.
The Popularity Ranking algorithm is designed to provide a statistical measure of confidence about the current experience at your hospitality business. As we accumulate more reviews on a business over time, we have more insight into the potential experience consumers can expect and are able to more accurately predict your ranking.
Over time, we continue to optimize and enhance the Popularity Ranking to improve our site experience for users and businesses alike. We know how important ranking on Tripadvisor is to businesses. Any changes we make are not undertaken lightly. They are carefully designed and tested to improve our rankings algorithm in very specific ways, while maintaining the accurate standings of existing businesses on Tripadvisor.
The latest changes have focused on promoting more consistency in the rankings. The goal with each change has been to more accurately reflect a business’s performance relative to others in its location over time, regardless of its size or the rate at which it collects reviews.
Your Tripadvisor Popularity Ranking is based on user reviews and reflects your standing against other businesses within your geographical location.
Your Popularity Ranking is important because the closer you are to the top, the more likely it is that users will see your business when they search your area. The more eyes you get on your listing page, the more bookings you are likely to get.
Tripadvisor popularity ranking is based solely on user feedback. Consistently collecting new, high-quality reviews — that reflect levels of service and value that meet expectations — is the best way for businesses to improve their position over time.
A couple of things to consider:
Providing great hospitality never gets old. The happier your customers are, the more likely they are to sing your praises in the review section.
This is the easiest way to increase your Tripadvisor ranking. Ask your customers to leave reviews of your business — if you’re not sure how to get started, we’ve put together some free tools you can use to collect more reviews.
To help with review collection Tripadvisor offers a variety of solutions and a review reminder tool. Businesses that use our solutions can consistently measure their performance and make improvements based on the feedback they receive. This family-run restaurant, for instance, leveraged Review Hub and collected a steady stream of reviews which catapulted them in just 6 months into the top 50 restaurants in their area.
This hotel decided to implement Reputation Pro with automated review collection, and in just one year averaged a 4.7-bubble score.
With this being said, please note that business’s commercial relationship with Tripadvisor has absolutely no impact on their popularity ranking.
Give your customers a memorable experience, encourage reviews, learn from the feedback, and watch all your hard work pay off!
