Improving Your TripAdvisor Ranking

Good TripAdvisor reviews and opinions can alter the ranking of a TripAdvisor business listing. A higher Popularity Ranking means more exposure, customers, and conversions.

The driving force behind these rankings is TripAdvisor’s Popularity Ranking algorithm. Specifically, it looks at three main factors to decide if your listing should be ranked higher or lower than the competition.

Review Quality

Review Quantity

Review Recency

Review Quality and How It Affects TripAdvisor Rankings

When calculating a listing’s rank the algorithm will look at its Quality, which is determined by the page’s overall bubble rating. That rating is affected by each customer’s review, specifically, the rating provided by the customer in their feedback.

In other words, you need to get more reviews with four or five bubble ratings. That’s easier said than done.

There is no quick fix that we know of to get a higher ranking with TripAdvisor. And it can be a long process.

Getting customers to give you high ratings on TripAdvisor all comes down to providing an excellent customer experience and service.

This starts with the TripAdvisor listing. Make sure that all of the information on the page is correct and up-to-date. Provide as much information as possible to make the purchase decision easier for the customer.

Listing presentation is also vital to the experience. Make sure that the images you add to the listing page are high quality and accurately shows the service or products provided (this is a key part of managing your reputation on TripAdvisor).

When customers do arrive at the business location give them service and an experience that exceeds their expectations. More customers are shifting to writing positive reviews so give them an experience that is nothing short of excellent.

Don’t promise customers anything that you can’t deliver. It’s best to be honest than over promise and leave guests underwhelmed. Surprise fees don’t result in happy customers either so ensure you are transparent during the booking process and don’t present your guests with any extra charges when they are on property.

Train and motivate your staff so that they feel able to resolve any issues before they escalate to online complaints. If possible, give them the authority to go the extra mile when resolving issues. Encourage them to ask for reviews.

You should also respond to the negative and positive TripAdvisor reviews that come in. This will do two things:

By responding makes sure you’re reading all the reviews that come in and staying on top of all customer issues. This will help you stay focused on improving the customer experience.
By resolving customer complaints, you’re more likely to get customers to update their review and leave a better rating, which will improve your ratings.

Review Quantity and How It Affects TripAdvisor Rankings

The quantity of reviews in a listing is also a ranking factor. But just because a business has more reviews than a rival establishment doesn’t automatically make it rank higher.

Instead, the TripAdvisor ranking algorithm uses each review to get an accurate representation of the “current experience.” Each listing needs to have a minimum number of reviews (which isn’t specified) in order for the algorithm to compare the experience at the business against local competitors.

The simple answer is to get as many reviews as possible. This allows the algorithm to correctly gauge customer sentiment towards the business, which gives the listing a more accurate ranking.

Fortunately, TripAdvisor has plenty of free tools that you can use to encourage customers to leave reviews. For instance, you can and should collect customer email addresses (with their permission) and use the Review Express tool to send reminder emails that ask them to leave a review on the listing page. Usually the day after they leave you, and then 30 days later.

You can use the Widget Center to download and install free widgets on your web site, which makes it convenient for customers who are already visiting that site instead of the actual listing page.

Other TripAdvisor review generation tools include placing stickers or fliers at high traffic areas within the business location, handing out reminder cards to customers when they leave the business location, or even simply asking them verbally to leave a review.

Review Recency and How It Affects TripAdvisor Rankings

The final piece of the TripAdvisor algorithm puzzle relates to when a review was published. In other words, TripAdvisor values a more recent review compared to a review that was posted six months ago.

Even if the older review had a high rating and the more recent review gave a low score, the new review is more valuable to the algorithm.

TripAdvisor also advise that Review Quantity and Recency are closely linked. A large batch of new reviews will have more weight as opposed to the same number of reviews that were published weeks or months ago. This is because these “fresh” reviews are more indicative of the current experience at the business.

The answer again is to get more reviews, but make sure that these new reviews are consistent or better in quality and rating than older customer reviews. This reduces the chance of a listing losing valuable ranking positions, and opens more opportunities to climb the TripAdvisor popularity charts.