Even when my old work was approved, it seems it doesn't appear among the newly added projects because of its age. So this is confusing also.
Viewing post in Is the review account-based or individual?
I'm promoting my own product, but I just want it to be briefly visible in the relevant category when it's published or approved. Isn't that one of the advantages of this platform?
I don't have control over when my product is approved or indexed, but when it is approved, it should at least appear in the recently added section, right?
So, does the "recently added" category only list products that were published at the time of publication and haven't gone through the approval process?
I don't have control over when my product is approved or indexed, but when it is approved, it should at least appear in the recently added section, right?
No. The "Newest" tab tends to get saturated very quickly because hundreds of games are published on Itch every day.
Right now, the latest game appearing on the first page of the "Newest" tab has only been published for about two hours. This means that games published yesterday or even this morning are no longer on the "Newest" page.
A game that needs to be reviewed by the staff can take days or weeks, so no, you won't appear on the "Newest" tab.
but I just want it to be briefly visible in the relevant category when it's published or approved
This is different. When someone searches for a game by category, Itch ranks the results using an algorithm (which is, again, secret), but as far as we know, popularity and the date of the last update play a role.
Also, when you search by category, you reduce the number of people competing with you.
If you advertise effectively and your page receives a lot of traffic, even if you published it days or weeks ago, you might appear near the top of a category (This also applies to the homepage)