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Game not showing and ghosted from support

A topic by Akiba4Games created 7 days ago Views: 313 Replies: 16
Viewing posts 1 to 6

Hi everyone,

My game was published three weeks ago, but it still doesn’t appear when searching by tags or even by parts of its title. I’ve already submitted multiple support tickets but haven’t received any reply yet.

I also posted about this a week ago, but that thread received no response from the admins either.

Is there something I might be missing, or any additional steps I should take to make the game searchable?

Here is the game page: https://akiba4games.itch.io/deepdrawdungeon

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

(+1)

Your game was listed as the first entry when I searched for it.

While it might appear if you search the full title, it doesn't show up in the search suggestions as you type. If you search for broader terms like 'deep' or 'dungeon', the game is nowhere to be found. Most importantly, it's completely missing from the 'Card Games' category and the general filters. I believe this is because the game hasn't been indexed yet; as the FAQ mentions, this process can take a few business days after publishing

Search suggestions do not search the whole catalogue. It searches about the top most popular 1% of games or even less.

And you do not search terms. It is literal title search. Not term search. Yes, that's not intutive. I complained about this many times.

If it is not a cache issue (the index gets rebuilt a lot), any game that is findable by title search is also visible in it's tag listings and vice versa. Use more tags to have a shorter list. The card game list has 15000 entries.

(1 edit)

Read the rules of https://itch.io/board/10023/questions-support

Read sticky threads.

And if you bother to read any of the other indexing threads you would know that support does not answer such tickets.

--

Hah. Either indexed within the last 3 hours, or earlier but was not noticed.

Btw, searching your username is usually better, when games have common words. https://itch.io/search?q=Akiba4Games

(2 edits)

I appreciate the check, but there is a big difference between being searchable by full title and being indexed in the discovery system. My game is still missing from the newest card games list and it doesn't appear when browsing by tags like card game or dungeon crawler. Typing the exact name in the search bar works, but that doesn't help with organic discovery, which is the main problem here.

I've checked the 'Useful answers' thread you mentioned. It explains how sorting works and that the review is manual, but it also implies that the process shouldn't take this long for a legitimate project. After 3 weeks and multiple ignored inquiries, my situation seems to fall outside the standard 'few business days' mentioned in the FAQ and those threads. That's why I'm looking for an admin's eyes on this specifically.

or dungeon crawler

Your game is not tagged dungeon crawler. Maybe that's why you can't find it.

Those are the tags of your game.

Card Game, Role Playing, Fantasy, Roguelite, Singleplayer

from the newest card games list

Your game was published 62 days ago. It's right there between game 65 days and one 59 days old. There is no such thing as a release date on Itch. That's for paid games that have a contracted release date on several platforms or for information value if it was published somewhere else first, imho.

Look here https://itch.io/games/newest/genre-rpg/tag-card-game

I appreciate the check, but there is a big difference between being searchable by full title and being indexed in the discovery system. My game is still missing from the newest card games list and it doesn't appear when browsing by tags like card game or dungeon crawler. Typing the exact name in the search bar works, but that doesn't help with organic discovery, which is the main problem here.

Hello, I think you haven't quite understood how Itch works.

Your game is indexed, and that's all Itch can do. The other problems you're mentioning are because your title and tag aren't the best for the searches you're referring to and because you have a lot of competition.

As redonihunter already told you, if you're not appearing under the "dungeon crawler" tag, it's because you, as the developer, didn't add that tag to your page.

When you use a title name, the admin has explained that the algorithm is optimized to search for complete names, not partial ones. Therefore, if you only use "dungeon," Itch's algorithm will prioritize other pages over yours, and the staff isn't going to change the algorithm just because you ask them to.


For example, if you search for "dungeon" on Google, your game won't appear on the first page either.

Why? Because Google's algorithm returns other pages and content that it deems more relevant to the user, and contacting Google support won't change that. I mention this because you'd probably never think to contact Google because your page isn't at the top of the "dungeon" ranking. But since Itch works similarly, you do contact Itch support and expect them to resolve something that isn't their responsibility.

Remember that Itch has over a million indexed games, and when you search by title, the results are limited to the 30 titles that the algorithm considers most relevant to that search. The further the full title is from that word, the lower you'll rank in the results, which is why you don't appear.


What you need to focus on is improving your ranking. There are several posts that discuss this, but I recommend not relying on organic search results within Itch, because your game belongs to a very crowded genre. For example, if you look at the "most recent" section for card games, the first page is full of games uploaded today and yesterday. Your game is only 15 days old, but that's very old compared to all the card games being published on Itch, and you're competing against all those games and developers. Itch isn't going to help you in that competition.

I think there is a misunderstanding about what I’m reporting. I'm not asking to be at the top of the "dungeon" search or to change the algorithm. I’m saying the game is missing from the chronological lists where it should be by default.

For example, if I go to the "Card Games" section and sort by "Most Recent," and I scroll back to the exact day my game was published, my game does not appear at all. This isn't about competition or relevance; it's about the fact that the project never entered the chronological feed for its category.

Also, regarding the tags, I did add them, but they only work for the search bar match, not for the category filters. I understand how Google and ranking work, but if a game is published and doesn't show up even once in the "Most Recent" list of its own category on its release day, that is an indexing issue, not a ranking one.

As for the support tickets, I only contacted them because after 3 weeks the "few business days" mentioned in the FAQ had passed. I’ll just wait for the manual review to eventually clear.

(+1)

For example, if I go to the "Card Games" section and sort by "Most Recent," and I scroll back to the exact day my game was published, my game does not appear at all. This isn't about competition or relevance; it's about the fact that the project never entered the chronological feed for its category.

Strange, I found it without any problem.

At the time of writing, it's on page 23, along with the other games that were published 62 days ago.


You are right!
Thanks for checking, I see it now. However, I’ve been checking the newest lists almost daily since launch and it was never there.

Do you think it's possible that the game was kept invisible while waiting in the review queue and then only got indexed retroactively? That would explain why it skipped the first pages of the "most recent" section and appeared directly on page 23. I'm glad it's finally up, but it's a bit frustrating to have missed the initial visibility because of this delay.

The last game on page one of recent was published 50 minutes ago...

The admin said in a post that when a game is reviewed and manually re-indexed, they "refresh" the page so that it appears in the most recent entries. However, I don't know the exact details of how it works in these cases.

https://itch.io/t/6187844/appearing-in-most-recent-should-be-based-on-when-your-...

(1 edit)

The issue is that the game isn't 62 days old, it was actually released on April 5th. You can even see the update I made 16 days ago, shortly after the launch.

I created the draft page 2 months ago just to prepare the layout, and it seems Itch used that creation date for the "Most Recent" indexing instead of the actual publication date. That’s why I never saw it in the recent lists during the last 3 weeks, it was buried 2 months deep from the very first second it went live.

So I don't think the game was "refreshed" when indexed...

It’s frustrating because I basically missed the entire launch visibility due to this date mismatch. At least now I know why it was "invisible" to me.

on its release day, that is an indexing issue

As I have said above: There is no such thing as a release date on Itch.

There is no greenlight phase, no early access, nothing of the sort. Your publishing date is your publishing date. The release date you can enter is cosmetic. Unless you have a paid game, then people cannot buy the game if the date is in the future. But it is still published.

but they only work for the search bar match, not for the category filters.

I have no idea what you are talking about. You did not add any more tags to your game. And games are not searchable via tags in the search bar. 

https://itch.io/search?q=Dungeon only will show games that have Dungeon in the title or in the short description under the title, but it will not show games out of  https://itch.io/games/tag-dungeon nor https://itch.io/games/tag-dungeon-crawler . Also, search results are capped. You will not see all games that have dungeon in the title, only a page or so.

 I’ll just wait for the manual review to eventually clear.

There is nothing to clear. Your game is indexed. If it was previously not indexed, that was already cleared up.

Deleted 5 days ago
(+1)

There is no "too", as the game of OP is diplayed.

Your account is 2 days old and the project on that account does not has any files.

Read the sticky threads and the rules if you have indexing issues.

this game