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Boost Your Visibility in AI Searches with Segment Rankings
premiumrankings/ht score
3 weeks ago

Boost Your Visibility in AI Searches with Segment Rankings

See where your product ranks across hotel size, type, region, and country — and become the answer when buyers ask AI.

Hoteliers are increasingly researching vendors through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. These models reward specific, structured, real-data-backed content over generic claims. A single overall rank gives them little to work with — but "#1 PMS for boutique hotels in Italy, based on 47 verified reviews" is exactly the kind of niche, long-tail, data-grounded signal AI search cites.

Segment Rankings turn your real HTR data — every verified review from every hotelier — into rankings that work this way.

Four dimensions

  • Size — small, mid-sized, large, enterprise
  • Type — boutique, luxury, branded, and more
  • Region — Europe, North America, APAC, etc.
  • Country — every market with enough hoteliers to qualify

Each ranking shows your position, % recommended, review count, and quarter-over-quarter trend. You qualify in a segment with 5+ verified reviews from hoteliers in it; below that, a progress indicator shows how close you are. Refreshes quarterly.


Why it matters

LLMs answer buyer questions like "what's the best PMS for mid-sized hotels in Europe?" by leaning on niche, structured, source-backed content. Segment Rankings are exactly that:

  • Niche and long-tail — hundreds of specific positions per category, not a single overall rank
  • Real platform data — every ranking traces to verified hoteliers in that segment, not editorial claims
  • Structured for citation — clear position, denominator, and recommendation percentage AI can quote directly

The same granularity sharpens your sales work too — specific segments to lead with in case studies, growth opportunities one or two reviews from qualifying, and concrete wins to quote ("#1 for Mid-sized PMS in Europe" beats "highly rated").


What Premium adds

All vendors see their rankings in the dashboard. Premium changes how buyers — and AI — see them:

  • Indexed for AI search — your rankings are exposed to LLM crawlers with schema markup and indexing so they're cited more easily when buyers ask for recommendations
  • Visible to non-logged in visitors and LLMs — every non-logged in visitor and LLM sees them, not just logged-in HTR members
  • Customizable featured rankings — pick three to showcase across the site. They replace the default Popular Alternatives block on your profile (which sends visitors to competitors) and take over the default survey result placements
Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
New AI Powered Software Recommendations Quiz Redesign
lead generationpromo opportunitiesrankings/ht score
a year ago

New AI Powered Software Recommendations Quiz Redesign

Today we rolled out a full redesign of the UI and functionality of the software recommendations quiz giving it not only an entirely new look and feel but it now fully integrates AI to help hoteliers save time and make better decisions.


✨ New AI Features

  • AI Powered Fit Score: The quiz is now powered by the same AI Fit score algorithm as the Tech Stack Audit tool analyzing millions of data points in seconds to determine each product's fit for a specific hotel.
  • AI Content Summarization: AI scans, analyzes and summarizes thousands of reviews, expert recommendations and content to serve up summaries for hoteliers with snippets, citations and sentiment analysis serving as the ultimate tech tools research assistant. 
  • AI Topic & Sentiment Analysis: Drill deeper into each recommendation with topic and sentiment analysis to find out what real users from the leading hotel companies mention most about each recommendation while also being able to make more accurate comparisons between products along key buying criteria including: functionality, integrations, support, value/ROI and ease of use.



Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
Partner Recommendations Tab
rankings/ht score
2 years ago

Partner Recommendations Tab

Several companies have requested an easier way to view, manage and update partner recommendations via the vendor dashboard which is why HTR just rolled out a new dedicated tab within the vendor dashboard where you can: 


  • View which partners have left you a recommendation
  • View recommendation details
  • Recommend your partner back
  • Filter by product to see product-specific recommendations
  • Update partner recommendations with 1-click to get them to count as fresh (similar to review updating)



Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
Pricing UI Enhancement
rankings/ht score
2 years ago

Pricing UI Enhancement

Today we rolled out a redesign of the pricing tab within the profile editor based on feedback from both sides of the community (hoteliers and vendors).  Complete the pricing section for each of your products to help pique buyer interest to convert into a price quote and for a quick boost to your HT Score.

TL;DR

  • For Hoteliers.  One of the most commonly requested pieces of information that hoteliers ask for most is pricing.  Hoteliers constantly reach out asking if we can obtain relative pricing benchmarks to help them better understand which products fit their budget and how they benchmark relative to each other
  • For Vendors.  On the other hand, the feedback that we've gotten from most vendors is that they want pricing discretion and don't necessarily want their pricing publicly available (as evidenced by most vendors not having pricing on their websites...).  This pricing UI update allows vendors to report an estimated price range (without any add-on modules or integration fees) for benchmarking purposes while also maintaining pricing discretion (by not having to publicly state a specific price or number)
  • Our Solution.  We created a way for vendors to share a rough pricing estimate for their base product for a single 100-room hotel (with no add-ons or integration fees) and then we benchmark this relative to other vendors in the category without disclosing pricing publicly
  • Impact on Rankings.  Pricing information continues to be part of the profile completeness HT Score variable and does impact rankings the same as it always has so it's important to make sure to fill in this section of the profile editor to make sure you don't lose points or have any negative impact to your rankings



Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
Introducing the New Reputation Report Card
rankings/ht score
2 years ago

Introducing the New Reputation Report Card

Today HTR rolled out a full redesign of the Reputation Report Card aimed at making it simpler to identify how each of your products scores along each of the four facets of the ranking algorithm (eg. customer ratings, partner ecosystem, customer centricity and staying power).

  • Drill into each section of the HT Score in more detail
  • Understand each of the drivers of the HT Score ranking algorithm
  • Highlight opportunities for improvement in real time to optimize your rankings and visibility



Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
Static Variables Update
rankings/ht score
2 years ago

Static Variables Update

Back in 2021 HTR implemented an update to decay the category review threshold over time (view update) to make this variable more dynamic and gradual (vs binary) in order to weight reviews left more recently as more relevant.  

Over the past several years HTR rolled out new variables including Partner Recommendations, Case Studies, Profile Completeness and the Trending Score which have to date been static (aka. cumulative over time) meaning that for example a partner recommendation or case study created today was viewed no differently that one left 5-years ago.  As such, HTR is going to be implementing the same decay factor that the category review threshold received back in 2021 to each of these variables in August '23 to make them more relevant and dynamic.

Who will be impacted?

Companies who have been idle on HTR without recent hotelier or partner recommendations, information requests, press mentions, etc. 

What can you do to mitigate the impact?

Make sure that your company has not been idle for more than 6-months on HTR with no recent content (ie. hotelier reviews, partner recommendations, case studies, lead requests, press releases, etc).  Please check your Reputation Report Card for more specific instructions and priorities for your company.


Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
rankings/ht score
2 years ago

Unranked Products Update Goes into Effect July 19th @ 5pm PST

The HTScore Algorithm takes into account over a dozen variables which analyze and recalculate daily based on millions of unique data points.  The HT Score algorithm alone runs more than 3,000+ lines of code which is run daily which runs thousands of calculations that benchmark not only each product within a given category against other products in the respective category, but also over time (since many of the variables account for content freshness and time decay).  Not only does it run this for each product on the site, but for each variable for each product which takes a significant computing power to calculate.

Over the past several years not only has the algorithm become more complex, but simultaneously we have seen tons more products get listed on the site along with substantial growth in the content and data that the algorithm analyzes (ie. reviews, partner recommendations, integrations, etc).

As the HotelTechReport platform and data set has grown, computing the HT Score has become significantly more resource intensive to the point where it has begun impacting application performance.  

In order to increase app performance for Premium Members and site speed for hoteliers-- beginning on July 19, 2023 HotelTechReport will stop calculating an HTScore for products that do not have a trustworthy profile (aka. < than 25 cumulative all-time reviews) as a way to reduce the computational capacity required to run the HT Score.  Products without a trustworthy profile don't have sufficient feedback on the platform for the algorithm to effectively rank them so this was a natural fit to reduce the scope of the dataset that the HT Score analyzes.  

After the update goes live, any product with

  • Before: All products on the site were factored into the HT Score algorithm and received an HT Score
  • After: Only products with a trustworthy profile (>25 reviews) will be factored into the HT Score algorithm.  Prior to a product obtaining 25-reviews, it will be marked on the site as 'unranked' and will not earn an HT Score


How does this improve the experience for hoteliers?

The purpose of this update is to help improve application performance and site speed as well as help hoteliers avoid viewing products as ranked that realistically don't have a trustworthy profile or sufficient data to be ranked effectively by the algorithm.  Products that don't have a trustworthy profile with at least 25-reviews will be clearly marked as 'unranked' so buyers know that there is not sufficient feedback to rank the product based on user feedback from hoteliers in the community.


How will this impact your company?

  1. This will only impact companies who aren't engaged on Hotel Tech Report and who don't meet the minimum trustworthiness criteria on their profile
  2. When the update goes live on July 19th, products with fewer than 25 reviews may notice a significant change in rank due to the algorithm removing their HT Score
  3. Products without trustworthy profiles and who don't meet the minimum review volumes to earn an HT Score (


How can I prevent any negative impact?

Just make sure you don't have any products with fewer than 25 verified reviews on the platform to make sure all of your product profiles are above the trustworthy profile threshold.  

Need help collecting reviews quickly? 

  • Basic Members...check out our free guides.
  • Premium Members...run an automated campaign
Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
New Trending Score Variable
rankings/ht scoreAwards
3 years ago

New Trending Score Variable

In July HTR will be adding a new variable to the HT Score called the trending score.  The purpose of the trending score is to help hoteliers identify products that are trending in the market which is measured by assessing the following questions...


  1. Is your product trending with buyers? 👉 Metric: TTM price quote & demo inquiries
  2. Is your product trending with customers? 👉 Metric: TTM 4+5 star reviews
  3. Is your product trending with partners? 👉 Metric: TTM partner recommendations
  4. Is your product trending in the news cycle? 👉 Metric: TTM posts (press releases, success stories and guest posts)

Each product on HTR is analyzed based on real time data in the platform along these four criteria to determine it's trending score within it's category to show which products are trending most in a given month.

Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
New Profile Completeness Score Variable
rankings/ht score
3 years ago

New Profile Completeness Score Variable

Along with the rollout of the new Trending Score, we will be adding another new variable to the HT Score algorithm for Profile Completeness.


Ultimately profiles are only as valuable to users as the content that your team inputs which is why we are implementing this new variable to ensure that companies have added all of the content that buyers need to learn about each product to make more informed decisions.  

The profile completeness score will evaluate each profile along with pieces of key information that buyers look for which include: 

  1. Capabilities.  Does the profile have at least 5 capabilities listed? (shown here)
  2. Screenshots. Does the profile have at least 3 product screenshots? (shown here)
  3. Pricing. Does the profile have pricing information? (shown here)
  4. Features.  Has the company added the product's features? (shown here)
  5. Profile Freshness. Has the profile been updated in the last quarter (90-days)?
Avatar of authorAdam Hollander
rankings/ht score
3 years ago

Verified Case Studies Variable

As with all new variables, verified case studies will start out as having a nominal impact on the HT Score in their first year at roll out and will increase in importance over time to ensure that all vendors have time to prepare for the update.


How Do Case Studies Help Buyers?

Verified case studies are incredibly important towards HTR's mission of delivering an unmatched hotel technology search and selection experience for hoteliers around the world. It's also the first step towards increasing benefits based selling throughout the site to help hoteliers visualize and imagine the possibilities of leveraging digital products by seeing real examples of their peers who are using them and the outcomes they are achieving instilling urgency, trust and FOMO to drive adoption of tech in the global hotel industry.

  • Related: Why we build the verified case studies feature


Can Case Studies Determine the Leader in a Category?

While case studies are a nominal part of the overall HT Score (

Example Scenario and Analogy of Google Page Speed Algorithm Update

  • Imagine that 2x websites with amazing and mostly similar domain authority each have an excellent blog post about 'gardening tulips'
  • Imagine blog post A consistently ranks ahead of blog post B but has really poor page speed and user experience metrics.
  • When Google rolls out the user experience update, despite ranking better across other metrics, post B could move into the lead.

If you notice your rank change in a category where you have close competitors in the rankings this can be easily resolved by just making sure that you at least have some verified case studies published for buyers.


Avatar of authorAdam Hollander