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Game doesn't show up when searching

A topic by DesertFox created May 24, 2024 Views: 237 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 4

If I search for "ww2" my game doesn't show up https://itch.io/search?q=ww2. My game is called WW2 FPS, so it should show up right? I'm sure it used to show up. It also seems there are very few search results for a generic term like ww2.

Link to my game: https://desertfoxdev.itch.io/ww2fps. Directly searching for the title works: https://itch.io/search?q=ww2+fps

I've read https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed and other posts on here, but I couldn't find any information as to why it wouldn't show.

Any help would be appreciated.

(+2)

Your game is indexed, otherwise it wouldn't appear in any searches, so I don't see any errors or anything you can do.

It is simply the way in which the algorithm is programmed, there are no public details of how it works, except that it is optimized to search for complete titles and not partial titles, hence it does not behave as you expect.

Even so, if you think there is an error, you should talk to support or the admin, who are the only ones who have access to review the search algorithm.

(+1)

The search results will typically have all of the full title matches and fill up with about 60 partial matches that are selected by dark magic.

Search for "fps" to see what I mean.

Ok, thanks for the help :) Only showing a limited number of results seems like a strange design decision...

I guess just have to hope itch.io improves this sometime in the future. Easiest would be to just add simple keyword search results after the 60 magic results.

Search does show you tags. But not all tags, only the ones that are in the suggestion box. Try searching for fps.

Bottom line is, why should people search for your game's name. Also that name is not a name, but a generic description like those:

d&d rpg

mushroom platformer

See?

And both of the words in your game's title are also used as tags. And tag search is not cut off. It will show you all 10000 games that have fps as a tag.

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