Recommendations
Personalization without user identity
Our short summary of Airbnb’s engineering write-up. The full story, with all the detail, is on their blog.
Read the full write-up on medium.com (opens in a new tab)Problem
New visitors arrive without login or history, so the system cannot personalize search and recommendations.
Solution
They created Proximity Features that group nearby anonymous users and use the group’s past behavior as signals, enabling instant, location‑based personalization without personal IDs.
Want the architecture, code and numbers? They’re in the original post.
Read the full write-up on medium.com (opens in a new tab)