Post by Airell in How does the popular section work? (are we delisted?)

Viewing post in How does the popular section work? (are we delisted?)

Ohh, I failed to explain this point, I've been doing monthly updates since the beggining. The spikes you see are my advertising on other sites, not just Itch promotion.

In fact, self-promotion helps a little, but still, 90% of my traffic comes from Itch, as well as all the other devs who are suffering from the algorithm change.

Sorry, man. I press on saying, it's kind of obvious... My numbers were stable, and so I lost almost 70% of my traffic overnight. There's not much to say, you sound like you're trying to tell me the sky isn't blue, that the grass is not green, and that Itch isn't actively trying to sabotage us.

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redonihunter1 year ago

Your numbers were slowly declining, and with those ups and downs, I would not call that stable.

But the recent plummet probably has other causes. Could still be the opposite of going viral though.

Since you are on page 1/25 of top sellers for html5 nsfw, but only on page 15/137 of popular, something is going on. Page 5/137 might be reasonable. But 15? To be in top sellers, people need to interact with your game first.

My faforite theory now is, that the server your game is hosted on, did not report the access numbers properly, making the algorithm believe your game is less popular wich is a self fulfilling prophecy in the short run.

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Airell1 year ago

You deny a fact that is simply evident in front of you, Itch is actively sabotaging us and our numbers have plummeted with the new algorithm. I don't know if you're just trying to troll or something, but anyway... Sorry but this isn't going anywhere

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No Time To Play1 year ago(+1)

Friendly reminder that for almost two days now there's been an official answer pinned to the top of this topic. Obviously some people have seen it, yet the discussion continues to revolve around the same old points, and by now it's just a shouting match. This isn't helpful anymore.

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redonihunter1 year ago

The explanation post from leafo, while an explanation for erratic behaviour and ups and downs, is not a sufficient explanation why the game of OP was suddenly sorted last in the browse of popular games. (It only made clear, that it is not something to do with the account)

I did eventually find our game at the very very bottom of the popular page (took 5 minutes to scroll to the VERY bottom)

Something happened. And it is prudent to assume it affected more than one game. And to happen in such a way, to include it, but sort it last, the sortin algorithm must have thought it to have near 0 popularity. Even when allowing for generous adjustments to mix in boosts for new games, this is too inaccurate to be considered normal behaviour. Either the data was wrong or the data processing was faulty.

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Airell1 year ago

I understand you're a mod and all, man. I respect your role here. But let's go...

1. You work thousands of hours for two years to create a game, monthly updates, a lot of spending with art assets, self-promotion on different sites, maintain a beautiful page.

2. You get good results, and you are satisfied with it.

3. A year later, the admin decides that you don't deserve the result you have and takes it away from you because others need attention.

Now, my artist and I were materially harmed by this, a concrete thing. Me and many other devs... And yes, unfairly. I just ask for a little empathy from you, and pls try to understand the side of the people who are suffering from the staff's poor decisions.

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No Time To Play1 year ago(+1)

There are over 850K games on itch.io, and who knows how many creators. Even if only 1% of them work as hard as you, that's still a lot of people. I don't see them come here and complain about a feature they were told isn't reliable, demand an official answer, then ignore that answer and insist they must be somehow targeted.

In an earlier post you used the word "meritocracy". You might want to look up why that word is extremely problematic.

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redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

the admin decides that you don't deserve the result you have and takes it away from you

You assert human agency. And then base your reasoning on this, as if it were true.

If it were true that someone decided your stuff should not deserve your results, you would have been de-indexed. You are not de-indexed.

While it looks like something did happen that was out of the ordinary and screwed with ranking big time, your game will recover. There is a pool of people looking for games like yours. While that pool might grow slowly as new people discover itch, you still have an area to expand in that can be considered finite. If you do not reach them today, you will reach them tommorrow. But the other way around is also true. If they already checked out your game, why should they do so again.

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redonihunter1 year ago(+4)

Even if there were a completely new algorithm building everthing up from scratch in popularity. You not being on top does not translate to you being targeted, it only translates to the other games being more popular according to new rules.

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