1. What This Page Covers
"Ranking" means the relative prominence we give to the goods and services offered by business users on OnFire, or the relevance we assign to search results, as presented, organised or communicated to consumers — whatever the technology used to present, organise or communicate them.
This page sets out the main parameters that determine that ranking and the reasons for their relative importance, as against other parameters. It is written so that a business user can reasonably understand whether, and how, the ranking mechanism takes account of the characteristics of the goods and services they offer, the relevance of those goods and services to the consumer, and the design characteristics of the surface they appear on.
It forms part of the Business User Terms.
2. This Is Not Our Recommender-System Disclosure
This page is addressed to business users and is made under Article 5 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1150. It answers the question: how does OnFire decide the order in which our offerings are shown to consumers, and can we pay to move up?
OnFire's disclosure about recommender systems under the Digital Services Act is addressed to recipients of the service and answers a different question: why am I being shown this? It is published separately.
The two disclosures overlap in subject matter but are owed to different people, must satisfy different tests, and are not interchangeable. Neither one discharges the other.
In fact there are four ranking-transparency duties, and this page discharges only one of them. The other two are owed to consumers and cannot be satisfied by anything written in terms and conditions — the Consumer Rights Directive expressly requires that the information be given "not merely in the standard terms and conditions or similar contractual documents", in a section directly and easily accessible from the page where the offers are presented.
| Duty | Audience | Where it must appear | Small-enterprise carve-out |
|---|---|---|---|
| P2B Art 5(1) — this page | Business users | Terms and conditions | None |
| DSA Art 27(1) | Recipients of the service | Terms and conditions | Removed for micro/small |
| CRD Art 6a(1)(a) | Consumers | Section linked from every offer page | None |
| UCPD Art 7(4a) | Consumers | Section linked from every results page | None |
The last two can share a single consumer-facing page; the first two cannot be merged with them or with each other. Nothing on this page should be read as discharging any of the other three. Note also that the UCPD carve-out for online search engines cross-refers to the P2B definition — and since OnFire is not an online search engine under that definition, the carve-out does not rescue it.
There is an asymmetry worth recording. The Digital Services Act disapplies its recommender-transparency duty for micro and small enterprises; Article 5 of the P2B Regulation has no size exemption at all. If OnFire is a small enterprise, this page is not a companion to a DSA disclosure — it is the only ranking-transparency document OnFire is obliged to publish, and should be treated as load-bearing.
3. Main Parameters, by Surface
Different OnFire surfaces order results differently. Each is set out separately below, because the differences are material: one surface applies a weighted score, the rest apply simple orderings, and on one the consumer chooses the ordering themselves.
3.1 Product search — recency only
When a consumer searches the shop by keyword, we match their words against product names and descriptions and then order the matches newest first. Nothing else is applied: no relevance score, no rating, no distance, no featured status, no measure of your commercial relationship with us. Two products that both match a search are separated only by which was listed more recently.
3.2 Nearby products — the consumer chooses
On the nearby-products surface the consumer selects the ordering themselves: distance, price ascending, price descending, or newest. Distance is the default. We do not override their choice.
3.3 Stays, vehicles, restaurants and events listings — featured, then recency, with distance first
On these browse and listing surfaces, results are ordered by:
Distance — applied first, but only if the consumer shares location
Where a consumer has chosen to share their location, results are sorted by straight-line proximity before anything else. Where location is not shared, distance plays no part at all.
Featured status — highest importance, rarely used
A small number of items are marked featured by OnFire administrators and appear first. Featured status cannot be bought — see section 5. It is used sparingly: 6 of 146,614 products currently carry it.
Recency — the effective default
Within each group, newer listings appear before older ones. Because featured status is applied so rarely, recency is what actually determines position for almost every listing.
No rating, sales volume, commission rate or measure of your commercial relationship with OnFire affects position on these surfaces.
3.4 Accommodation search — weighted score
Accommodation search, as distinct from the stays browse listing above, is the one surface that uses a combined score. The parameters and their exact relative importance are:
| Parameter | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | 0.34 | How well the listing matches what the consumer searched for. |
| Availability | 0.22 | Whether the listing is actually available for the requested dates. |
| Guest rating | 0.16 | Average rating left by previous guests. |
| Host status | 0.10 | The host's standing on the platform. |
| Instant booking | 0.08 | Whether the listing can be booked without host approval. |
| Review volume | 0.06 | How many reviews the listing has. |
| Listing recency | 0.04 | How recently the listing was created or updated. |
| Featured (administrator-set) | +0.05 | An additional bonus, not part of the weighted total. Cannot be bought — see section 4. |
The first seven weights sum to 1.00. Relevance and availability together account for more than half of the score, so matching what a consumer actually searched for, and being genuinely available on those dates, matter more than every other factor combined. Guest rating is the largest reputational input at 0.16. Where scores tie, newer listings rank first.
Host status currently contributes nothing. The 0.10 host-status weight depends on a host verification record, and no host has one at present, so that term evaluates to zero for every listing. The weight is stated because it is in the formula and will begin to apply once host verification is in use — but as things stand it does not separate any two listings.
3.5 Conduct penalties described in our vertical terms
Correct the other documents, not this page
The Car Owner Terms, section 5, tell owners that cancellations may reduce their "reliability rating or search placement". The merchant terms say excessive order rejection may reduce visibility.
Neither is implemented. The audit found no reliability score, no cancellation counter and no rejection-rate term in any ordering expression, and no such column on the relevant tables. The vehicle surface is ordered by featured status and recency alone. Rating feeds ranking on accommodation search only. These clauses therefore describe a penalty mechanism that does not exist — an already-published overstatement of what the product does. The fix is to correct those documents, not to invent a matching parameter here.
4. Whether Payment Influences Ranking
No. You cannot pay to rank higher on OnFire, on any surface.
There is no paid promotion, no boosted or sponsored listing, no subscription tier and no commission rate that improves your position in any list or search result. No ordering expression anywhere on OnFire refers to advertising, subscriptions or fees.
OnFire does sell advertising, but it never enters these results. Ads are fetched separately, labelled "Sponsored", and placed in their own slots between items in the social and video feed. They do not appear in shop, accommodation, restaurant, vehicle or event listings at all, and they never mix into the ordering of organic results.
The only manually-adjustable ranking input is featured status, which is set by OnFire administrators and is not for sale. This is enforced in our database rather than by policy alone: a trigger resets any attempt to change featured status by a caller who is not an administrator, so the restriction holds even if an application-level check were bypassed.
If we ever introduce a way for remuneration to influence ranking, we will describe it here and give business users notice of the change under section 5 before it takes effect.
Note for reviewers — this finding is conditional, not permanent
This Article 5(3) answer concerns the duty owed to business users. Consumer law separately bans presenting a paid-for placement in search results without disclosing it, and that duty is inline — an "Ad" or "Sponsored" label at the result itself, not a statement on a policy page. It is currently satisfied only because no paid placement exists anywhere in these results. The day any boosted or sponsored listing is introduced, both this page and the labelling in the product must change together, or the practice becomes a banned one on the day it ships.
5. Changes to Ranking
This page forms part of our terms and conditions for business users. If we change the main parameters set out here, we will notify business users of the change in the same way, and with the same notice, as any other change to those terms — see section 2.5 of the Business User Terms.
Not yet implemented — operational consequence
Publishing this page creates a standing engineering obligation: any change to a ranking parameter listed here becomes a terms change requiring 30 days' notice to business users. That needs an owner and a process before the page goes live, or the first ranking tweak after publication silently breaches the notice commitment.
6. What We Do Not Disclose
We are not required to disclose our ranking algorithms, and we do not. Nothing on this page is a commitment to disclose the detailed functioning of our ranking mechanisms, including any algorithm.
That limit protects the algorithm. It is not a reason to withhold the main parameters or their relative importance, which are set out above in the detail the Regulation requires.
We also do not disclose anything that would enable deception of consumers or harm to them through the manipulation of search results.
7. Questions
Business users with questions about ranking on OnFire can contact us at [email protected]. If you believe a ranking decision has affected you unfairly, the process at Complaints and Mediation for Business Users is open to you.