How does itch.io sort games by these criteria: popular, new&popular, top rated, top sellers, most recent?
I'm afraid the heyday of itch.io is long gone - and that is for most online game markets no matter how big - today if a game is not on steam it might as well not exist 🤔
if you are looking for exposure on itch I suggest entering one of them game jams
(but don't expect hundreds or thousands - just to be at least seen by someone)
still as it was suggested before me: screenshots, description, good thumbnail
at least give people some idea what they are in for 😓
The exact criteria are secret so people don't try to cheat. If you want your game to be seen, please promote it, both on itch.io and in other places. Don't just wait.
Besides, your game is called "test.1", the description only says "this is a test", and there's no screenshot. Why would anyone be interested?
Your test game is not indexed. And why should it. Read here https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines
Your topic is a different question than the text in your posting.
How does itch.io sort games by these criteria: popular, new&popular, top rated, top sellers, most recent?
As far as I know and have observed:
Popular: secret metric of popularity. Horror games are popular on youtube, so they are also popular here. What a surprise.
New & Popular: same as popular, but with added weighting for newer games.
Top rated: weighted metric for the rating average. 1000 ratings with average 4.5 are worth more than 10 ratings with 5.0, this kind of weighting. I do not know the specifics, but a similar or the same system is used in jams.
Top sellers: some metric concerning money. Could be total money spent. Could be individual buyers. Could be anything. But it includes the pay what you want games.
Most recent: Sorted by date. Publishing date, or approved major update devlog.