So I never got a response on the ticket or anything, but the game is properly listed on popular now so it's been resolved.
"properly listed". That's a good one.
I just saw your game on the first page of https://itch.io/games
Seems they have done something manually, so popularity would recalculate, because your game is no longer listed in the 2022 listings. Or they cleaned up some data mess and that is a side effect from that.
I guess they either had to re-enter the game in the database to fix the bug, or bug fixing did that as a side effect. Your game has a recent time stamp. It's in the last 7 days bracket.
I am not sure how the yearly selection works in regards to time stamp updates, like when you get a bumb by having an "approved" devlog.
Maybe it's a deprecated listing mechanism. They did not make a 2025 list yet.