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Trying to understand how indexing and most recent works

A topic by Wildspell Games created 9 days ago Views: 118 Replies: 4

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Hi there!

I've published our game page almost a year ago without any download. Because of that we were not fitting in the criteria to appear on Most Recent list etc.

Now, I published our first demo of the game, and double checked all the requirements to be indexed and appearing in discovery pages, as it is specified in the itch.io documentation.

But our game did not appear in the discovery pages. It is being indexed, but I can't find it published anywhere except by searching for the game name in the search box.

The game is https://wildspellgames.itch.io/choosecthulhufiles

Can you help me here? Thanks!

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TheMetalCarrotDev9 days ago

I’d describe the Most Recent as kinda like a list, where new stuff pushes the old stuff downward and out of sight - and often rather quickly. The boost you get from appearing in Recent can lose momentum quickly. ie, the Recent category isn’t a long-term promotion strategy.

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redonihunter9 days ago

"recent" ist not the discovery pages. The whole system is.

Your tags could be better. Here. Your games on "page 1" of a discovery page.

https://itch.io/games/tag-apocalyptic

https://itch.io/games/tag-cosmic-horror

A devlog might sort you into recent again, but this is nothing to count on. It's humans doing that bump, and they might not have had time for that or just did not do it. They do not approve every devlog.

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Wildspell Games9 days ago

Thanks for the responses :)

TheMetalCarrotDev: Yes. I was aware that maybe I could be pushed very fast to the bottom, but did not think that was that fast xD We just wanted to take advantage of apperaring there the first time. Our promotion strategy is based on creating some community around the game in the mid term, but first we need to show the game to people that could want to join that community :)

redonihunter: Ok. I will think a bit more about the tagging of the game. Thanks for the suggestion. Today I posted a new devlog, but I did not see the game appearing anywhere, but as you said, the game appears in the tag listings, so it seems the game is currently indexed and the system is working as expected.

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redonihunter9 days ago(+1)

If you do not have a generic short developer name, you can just do this: https://itch.io/search?q=Wildspell+Games

Only indexed items appear in search and browse. That's literally what indexed means: will appear in search and browse. That was search. Browse is the games subpages, which currently have 1.25 million projects. So, some filtering is needed.

Having exotic tags is not a bad thing. But best look at similar games and which tags they use. Tags are used differently on different platforms. Someone tagged your game point&click on Steam. That game does neither look like a point&click nor like an adventure game to me. You hit an alias of the tag lovecraft. I did not know that was so popular. 1000 games there. That's good. The target audience might stumble over you by this.

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