It removed few ratings, but now my game has gone from all popular charts and isn't appearing in any tags. This is so bad, is it automated? Can itch staff fix my issue?
Viewing post in Bots are mass rating my game. Rating bombing?
What issue?
Scroll down further. Your game even appears in the suggestion box, when you type. Also in tags. If you use the horror tags, there are many games in there that are also popular.
And bad publicity is still publicity. If they deleted fake ratings your game's apparant popularity might have been newly calculated and was adjusted. If they newly calculate such things, it might also take a while till the averages are correct again. I have no clue how they do it. But I do know that they do not simply count views and that the ranking is not straightforward. There even is a bonus for new games that skews ranking.
The game is still on page 1 here https://itch.io/games/last-7-days
Admins have a red tag saying admin. Moderators have a blue tag saying moderator.
I am a user.
And I am telling you, your game is still visible, still searchable and still appears in tags. And it is still "in the popular charts". Whatever that means. Because ALL games that are indexed, absolutely all of them are in the popular chart. That's what indexed means. https://itch.io/games is a list of all indexed games.
It is not at place 3 anymore. Btw, it was at place 4 when I looked. That list is volatile and it is weekend. Many people play. And the more viral the fame, the volatile I would guess.
This here https://itch.io/games/last-7-days has 4000 games. Your's is currently in the top 36 of those 4000.
Type c h e in the search box. The suggestions there only account for like the most popular 1% of games.