@Robin4 , @Branka-and-Silvia0 , @Amenity0 . Hi Robin, it shows "5 views, past 30 days". These could well be me viewing my own listing in the course of today's troubleshooting. As I mentioned, when I am logged in as myself, I can see my listing (but not when I am logged out, nor can another person I asked see me when she is logged into her account). The stats don't show when in the last 30 days the 5 views were made.
You're absolutely right, I got a booking Jan 20-23. In Airbnb's complex visibility system, my place must have surfaced then because of the overwhelming demand of people to stay in DC around that time, due to both the inauguration and the Women's March on Washington. So, this seems to be conditional invisibility. 😕
Actually, after posting my question on the community forum, and before getting your reply, I did call Airbnb about this problem. The person told me I had many denials (which is their word for declining booking requests) in the past, and that's affecting my visibility today. It's true: I did do many declines, because I was on intense travel, had friends over, and during other periods didn't feel fully ready yet to host, as I was still pondering the Airbnb thing. Sadly though I was never warned during this period that denials carry a visibility penalty with them in the future. I did get messages asking if I wanted to temporarily deactivate my account, but since I didn't know there is a downside to staying activated, I didn't deactivate. 😞
Thanks for pointing to the benefits of instant-booking. The person I spoke to said that while instant-book status doesn't affect visibility per se, it increases the chance of being booked, and being booked will help me slowly reduce the visibility penalty I currently face for my past declinings. Sounds like in your experience though, insta-booking does affect visibility. Instabooking seems for me a bit too "open", and while I know I can cancel if I'm not comfortable with the person or booking, the ABB person did also tell me that cancellations have a fairly heavy penalty on visibility. So maybe I'll be a bit cautious re instabooking for now.
Thanks also for your tip #2. Today (before posing my Q on the community forum) I did in fact do a number of refreshes: Added better shot photos of the listing, improved the choice of my profile photo, filled in more of the boxes re the listing, neighbourhood, etc. I hope then that will help as you imply!
Many thanks for taking the time to respond, Robin!
Tewodaj