In short, you have no guarantee either way, no matter what you do, that at the point of your publishing your game is currently on the index or on top of recent.

Itch's stance, as seen in many similar threads is: rely on your own promotion. This is not dependent on being visible in the indexing system.

In long:

Each time you upload a project or update it, there is a chance that it will be put in queue for manual review. While in queue it is not indexed. This can take days, weeks or over a month. The queue seems to not be first in first out.

If you create a major update devlog, there is a chance that it will be put on top of recent. It is said that this has to be approved by staff. So do not count on it, as it stands to reason they are also busy with checking out games that wait for indexing. Just check top of recent yourself, how many older games you will find there.

No one will search for your game in any significant amount, why should they. Also, if you promote your game in some way, people will have a direct link and do not even need to search it. You have several projects, you do see, how you got views on your games. Do they visit you by searching your game's names?

The spotlight in recent is about 5 minutes. (Like literal. At the time of this writing it is 2 hours on page 1). So do not put too much thought into this.