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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

The funny part is that Detroit just passed a law that basically bans AirB&B which caused a purge of the AirBnBs entries there

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I bet what OP is seeing is in response to that. Detroit is likely a much more common search, so to keep that populated, they just collapsed all of Dearborn into it.

Maybe, but seems poorly done. You'd want to make it so it shows Dearborn when searching for Detroit. But you shouldn't make it show all of Detroit and surroundings when you search for Dearborn.

That was the way it was done previously.

This seems like the most reasonable answer. It otherwise doesn't make sense that AirBnB would want to lump these listings into a city nearby for searches specifically asking about a particular location.

But wouldn't you expect it to work the other way around? Say, if I search for "Detroit, MI" it would expand the search query to the surrounding area. But this takes "Dearborn, MI" expands the search query and gives preference to places that are outside of the city.

I'm not saying that's not the root cause, just that it seems like a backwards implementation if so.

Maybe that's a way to give Detroit hosts an incentive to stay on Airbnb. After all, the more money they make the more likely they are to still use Airbnb despite the new city rules. So pushing more demand towards Detroit will reduce the number of hosts who decide to leave the platform (and possibly attract new hosts).

I think it can make sense from a business standpoint. It is unfortunate it hurts other hosts who have nothing to do with it. But I would guess this is just temporary.

New York City passed this law as well, and yet I've stayed in multiple AirBnBs in NYC.

All the law accomplished was sending the sellers underground. Now every time you get a place on AirBnB in NYC you need to interact with a brand new seller account with only a few reviews, and a vague description of where the place is located.

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