Hi fellow itch users, I already emailed itch support about this but I thought I'd post here too to get more opinions:

I recently published a game called "Alvin and the DEATHMUNKS" it's a dumb little horror game I made for fun and it seemed to pick up quite a lot of steam. Infact, it's the most successful game I've ever made and it somehow got to the front page of itch (trending). The reason I'm posting here is because I noticed that in the last 24 hours almost nobody has seen my game, I tried searching for it using the tags to filter it and even when I used the exact tags my game is under it will not appear. 

I thought maybe my game was under late review but from what I understand if a game is under review it is removed from searches completely. This is not the case as my game can still be found by typing it's exact name in the search bar or through my page.

So my game is barred from any searches that aren't it's exact name (therefore it IS indexed), it's not listed as NSFW (nor is it an NSFW game) and it doesn't seem like it's under review... Why has my game been barred?

Thanks guys <3

If your game shows up in searches, then it shows up in searches, and any drop in traffic is probably due to other factors. Due to the search algorithm being designed to be somewhat unpredictable, it can be hard to say why. Sorry about that. Try posting a devlog, those tend to help.

Hi, thanks so much for replying!

I understand a drop in traffic but my game shot from top 50 of all games to being practically impossible to find overnight. It's not just a shot to popularity, the game is buried under literally thousands of games that all have barely any to zero interactions. 

I'm not upset about the algorithm deranking my game, if people aren't clicking on it that's fine, the problem is every game that was there before I uploaded my game hasn't moved a spot and mine has been placed to the bottom of the bottom despite consistent clicks daily (over 90% drop). As far as im aware I haven't broken any rules. I'm starting to think tweaking my project is a dice roll that will hurt my game's searchability which does not incentivise me to make my projects better.

Sorry, I know you don't have the answers and that the matter is "resolved" as far as itch is concerned. Thanks for taking the time to read everything!