Write your own meta titles and meta descriptions in your PMS, and HomeRunner will use them on your property pages in place of the auto-generated defaults.
What it does #
When Google shows one of your property pages in its results, it displays a title and a short description. By default your SEO plugin generates both: the title comes from the property name, and the description is drawn from the start of the property description. That text was written for a guest reading the full page. Google cuts it to snippet length, so it often ends mid-sentence in your search results.
Source mapping lets you take over. You create custom fields in your PMS (for example “Meta Title” and “Meta Description”), write the exact values you want for each property, and point HomeRunner at those fields. Because the source of truth stays in your PMS, you or your SEO agency can manage search snippets as part of the normal listing workflow, with no website access needed.
This works with any PMS that supports custom fields, including Guesty, Hostaway, Hostfully, and OwnerRez.
How to set it up #
1. Create the custom fields in your PMS #
Create one field per value, at the property (listing) level, with names that make their purpose obvious, such as “Meta Title” and “Meta Description”. Setup guides for custom fields in Guesty, Hostfully, Hostaway, and OwnerRez.
2. Write the values for each property #
Fill in the fields on your listings in your PMS. Keep meta descriptions to roughly 155 characters so Google shows them whole. You do not have to cover every property at once: any property whose field is empty simply keeps its auto-generated title or description.
3. Let HomeRunner pick up the new fields #
Newly created fields take a little while to reach your site. HomeRunner checks your PMS for new field definitions on a regular schedule (for Guesty, within about an hour, and usually within minutes of a value being saved on a listing). Then, in your website’s admin, open HomeRunner settings, go to the Sync section, and click the Refresh button in the Connection box. That reloads the list of custom fields available to the dropdowns. Running a property sync does not refresh this list, so do not skip the Refresh click.
4. Map the sources #
In the same Sync section, open the Source Mapping settings and find Meta Title Source and Meta Desc Source. Select your new custom fields in the dropdowns and save.
5. Sync your properties #
Run a property sync (or wait for the next automatic update) so the values flow from your PMS onto the property pages. From then on, edits to those fields in your PMS carry over with each sync.
Settings #
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Meta Title Source | Which custom field supplies the page’s meta title. Default: None, meaning the title is generated from the property name. |
| Meta Desc Source | Which custom field supplies the page’s meta description. Default: None, meaning the description is generated from the property description text. |
Tips #
- The meta description is usually the one worth writing by hand. The property name already reads well as a title, but an auto-generated description rarely delivers the message you want in a search result.
- Every custom field in your PMS appears in the dropdowns, including internal-only fields, so clear names save you from mapping the wrong one.
- If your new field is not in the dropdown: confirm it is a property-level field, make sure at least one listing has a value saved in it, wait up to an hour, and click Refresh again. If it still does not appear, contact support and we will refresh the connection from our side.
- HomeRunner applies the mapped values through the Rank Math SEO plugin, the standard SEO plugin on HomeRunner sites. If your site runs a different SEO plugin, contact support before setting this up.
- Custom fields can control property URLs the same way. See Property URL Management.
- For the full picture of what HomeRunner does for search visibility, see SEO, AEO, and GEO: how HomeRunner gets your properties found.