It does not! At least it did not 8 years ago when I worked there. Obviously a lot can change, but they realized the one competitive advantage they had that kept others out of the market was the huge catalog of user reviews.
While other things may be fudged for profitability, there was a clear line between content and advertising we didn't cross.
There are quite a few TA people on HN. Maybe one will chime in?
I don't work at TA, but I do own a tiny hotel in France so I deal with Booking.com and TA rather frequently -- TA does have a paid product for hotels, however other than not having my website URL and the ability for people to book directly with me on my TA profile, there has been absolutely zero difference in our visibility on TA. So far, TA has been really nice to work with despite me not paying them anything (yet.)
TA is definitely my go-to app when I go places; it is pretty good both as a consumer and as a listee.
I found TA invaluable for researching trips to Italy, Israel, and Costa Rica. You definitely have to use it carefully, and I verified with other sources, but there's a lot of good information there.
Ranking on TripAdvisor is based only on review data, with more recent reviews carrying more weight as you'd expect. I work on this personally. Money has no influence whatsoever.
